


Where There's Smoke, There's Fire

by baeconandeggs, nineteenninetytwo (pcychedelic)



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Action, Alternate Universe - Spies & Secret Agents, Angst, Blood, Espionage, Humor, M/M, Past! Chanyeol/Minseok, Politics, Sexual Content, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-28
Updated: 2019-05-28
Packaged: 2020-03-26 13:48:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 23,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19007047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/baeconandeggs/pseuds/baeconandeggs, https://archiveofourown.org/users/pcychedelic/pseuds/nineteenninetytwo
Summary: Chanyeol has always tried his best to keep his job and his personal life miles away from each other. But when a mission goes awfully wrong and Baekhyun is put in harm's way, Chanyeol does everything he can to protect him.





	1. The Mission

**Author's Note:**

> **Prompt:** BAE045  
>  **Disclaimer: baeconandeggs/the mods is/are not the author/s of this story. Authors will be credited and tagged after reveals.** The celebrities' names/images are merely borrowed and do not represent who the celebrities are in real life. No offense is intended towards them, their families or friends. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. No money is being made from this fictional work. No copyright infringement is intended.  
>   
> 
> **Author's Note:**  
>  To the mods, who have been nothing short of patient and understanding, I'd like to say thank you. To the person who's always first to read my stories, my lovely beta, A, thank you for being ever so encouraging. Finally, to the prompter - I really tried my best for this fic to justify your prompt, and I hope it did.
> 
> Small disclaimer(s): I've never actually been to Korea, so the places and other stuff I've mentioned here are purely based from research I've managed to do; my deepest apologies for any inaccuracies. Also, as an International Studies major, I couldn't not add a sprinkle of politics into a fic about espionage; the politics included in this work mirror some actual political situations, but are used fictitiously for the sake of the plot, so kindly take them with a grain of salt.
> 
> I hope you all enjoy reading this! ♡
> 
> _[UPDATED 190616] Some edits have been made on minor mistakes & the Spotify link for the playlist has been added to the end notes._

Chanyeol’s bowtie is suffocating him. It’s been a while since he wore a tux. More specifically, it’s been a while since he wore a tux for a mission, the last time being two years ago when he had work in Vienna that had something to do with an opera.

He’s never taken a liking to fancy things. Luxuries are for people that have money to spend, and Chanyeol wasn’t fortunate enough to grow up like that. Chanyeol’s living a comfortable life now, thanks to his well-paying job, but it’s his choice not to indulge in opulence. Perhaps it’s because old habits die hard, even if those habits were forced upon him. From his pay, he deposits only what he needs into his local account, and the rest he entrusts to the Swiss—he thinks of it as somewhat like a contingency plan.

“Nice tux, Agent Lux,” his partner says through the earpiece. “Oh, shit. Wait. That rhymed.”

Chanyeol tries his best not to roll his eyes, as he isn’t sure if anyone’s watching him right now. “Congratulations,” he replies sarcastically. “Maybe you should change your codename from Ventus to Shakespeare. Why don’t you take it up with the boss? Maybe he’ll listen.”

“Ha ha,” Sehun says, and Chanyeol doesn’t need to see him to know that he’s scowling. He’s been with Sehun for far too long for him not to memorize his partner’s grumpy tendencies.

Chanyeol has scanned the entire party on the first floor but failed to locate his target, so he climbs up the grand staircase to try his luck on the second floor. The whole villa is flooded with a sea of guests donned in gowns and suits and servers flying around while carrying trays of champagne and finger food and whatnot. It baffles Chanyeol how a woman’s twenty-first birthday party is comparable to a state dinner.

“Do you have access to the mansion’s security cameras?” he asks Sehun when he has made it up the stairs.

“Of course.”

“Can you locate her?”

“What do you think I’ve been doing for the last fifteen minutes?” Sehun questions, and that’s that. His partner still seems pretty offended about the Shakespeare jab, so Chanyeol doesn’t say anything else.

Chanyeol weaves himself into the crowd to obscure his search from possible watchful eyes. If a party is this formal, he can only assume that the guestlist is filled with affluent names, which means security must be crawling everywhere.

“I see her,” Sehun says abruptly.

Chanyeol stops in his tracks and looks around. “Where?”

“At the bar opposite the staircase,” his partner replies. “She’s wearing a white halter gown with a gold belt. She has her hair down.”

“Are you sure it’s her?”

“Yes, I’m sure. I’m looking at her photo in the file given to us. Park Jihyo. Twenty years old… well, twenty-one now. Daughter of Park Eunhye, who’s being investigated by the NIS and us. Do you want me to go on or do you need a refresher on the assignment?” Sehun asks mockingly.

Chanyeol’s eyes immediately fly to the bar that Sehun mentioned, and they land on a certain birthday girl. _Bingo_. He has finally zeroed in on his target.

“I have eyes on the package,” Chanyeol reports. “I’m going in.”

Chanyeol fixes his suit as he prowls toward his prey for the night. She’s beautiful, he must admit. It’s a shame that she’s the target of this mission. But then again, Chanyeol has never been fond of women.

“She has company,” Sehun says, pertaining to the other woman seated beside Jihyo. “They’re laughing, so I’m assuming she’s a non-hostile. A friend, perhaps.”

Chanyeol already knows that, but says nothing. Of course she’s a non-hostile. The daughter of a billionaire wouldn’t chat with any of her security detail over margaritas at her own party.

“Wanna go through the plan one more time?” his partner asks.

“Locate target, catch her attention, get myself alone with her, locate her phone, install the software,” Chanyeol recites without a sweat. “Easy.”

Luckily, the other seat beside Jihyo is empty. Chanyeol claims that spot and clears his throat, making sure that his entrance is announced and hoping that his target takes the bait.

For good measure, Chanyeol asks the bartender, “A glass of brandy. Neat, please.”

“Would Beauté du Siècle suffice, sir?” the bartender asks with a smile, pronouncing the French perfectly.

“That’s exactly what I’m looking for, actually,” Chanyeol answers. From his peripheral vision, he sees that Jihyo has turned to look at him, seemingly impressed by his taste in spirits. Chanyeol’s lips slightly curl into a smirk, just enough so that his target wouldn’t know that the smug smile is directed at her.

 _I’ve got her now_ , Chanyeol says to himself.

The bartender smiles even wider. “Excellent choice, sir. I’ll be right back.” And then he’s off to fetch Chanyeol’s drink at the far end of the bar.

Chanyeol drums his fingers on the polished wooden table and pretends to look around the party while waiting for his brandy—he knows Jihyo is looking at him right now, which is why he’s turning his head around so that she can see his face in full. Chanyeol’s humble in most aspects, but he knows for a fact that his looks can be valued at a million bucks. He has his parents’ genes to thank for that.

“You have expensive taste,” Jihyo remarks. Chanyeol finally lets his eyes fall unto her and notices that she has made her friend leave.

“Target has engaged,” Chanyeol hears his partner say into his earpiece. _Indeed_ , he wants to reply, but he’s a bit preoccupied at the moment.

Chanyeol smirks further. “Well, I want nothing but the best,” he says to his target. He hates how snobbish he sounds right now, but he doesn’t really have a choice. If he gets assigned to a mission, he has to do it, no matter what. Being selective isn’t an option in his line of work.

Jihyo cocks an eyebrow at him and smiles back, finishing the last of her margarita.

The bartender returns with Chanyeol’s drink. “Here you go, sir. A glass of Hennessy Beauté du Siècle, neat, just like you asked,” he says. Chanyeol thanks him and the bartender smiles one last time before he sets off to attend to the other people at the bar, leaving him and his target alone once again.

Chanyeol downs the shot in one swift, clean swig. The alcohol burns in his throat, but he welcomes the fire. College teaches you a thing or two about taking your liquor.

“Impressive,” Sehun compliments him through their line. “And I think I’m not the only one who found that impressive.”

True enough, Jihyo’s eyes are glued to him as he sets down the glass on the table, traveling from his lips down to his throat. Her big round eyes are gleaming with something Chanyeol has yet to figure out—lust, he hopes. He throws her another smile.

“You know how to drink,” she says.

“My family has an interest in fine spirits. Connoisseurs, you might say. I guess it runs in the blood.”

Jihyo flips her hair over her shoulder and sits a bit more straight. _She’s devoured the bait now_. “I’m sorry, I haven’t properly introduced myself,” she giggles, extending her hand for Chanyeol to shake. “I’m Park—”

“Jihyo,” Chanyeol finishes her sentence for her as he accepts her handshake. “Oh, I know all about you, Ms. Park. You’re the star of the night, after all. Happy birthday.”

“Please. Ms. Park’s my mother. Let’s just stick to first-name basis. Unless, of course, you’re younger than I am.”

“I’m older, actually. Just by a year, don’t worry.”

“In that case… should I roll out the honorifics?” she asks, tilting her head curiously. Suggestively. Chanyeol knows an enticed prey when he sees one.

“Your flirting skills are commendable, Agent Lux, but we’re in a bit of a time crunch here. We don’t have all night,” his partner reminds him through his earpiece, and Chanyeol thinks so too. “Wrap it up.”

Chanyeol sits up straight and clears his throat. “Choi Changmin,” he introduces his cover. “Seunghoon’s my uncle.”

A spark of recognition ignites in Jihyo’s eyes. _She just keeps eating all the shit I’m feeding her_ , Chanyeol thinks. “Ah, _the_ Choi whiskey distillers. I was wondering why I haven’t seen Mr. Choi all night.”

But Chanyeol knows that it’s because Choi Seunghoon never got his invitation. The agency intercepted it so that they could use it as a ticket for one of their agents, in this case, him. It was way too easy, really. The wealthy aren’t as slick as they think they are.

“The clock is ticking, Agent Lux,” Sehun reminds him again.

Chanyeol smiles at his target—it’s his most powerful weapon for the night. “Jihyo, is there some place where we can be alone?” he asks, his tone dripping with undertones.

“As a matter of fact, we do,” she says. Her eyes grow even bigger, and Chanyeol confirms that it was lust swirling in them, after all. Jihyo stands up from her seat, and the second she does, men dressed like normal guests immediately make their way toward her.

 _Huh_. _So that’s where her babysitters are_ , Chanyeol says to himself.

She waves them off, “It’s fine. We’re just going up to my room.”

The bodyguards look at each other. The oldest-looking one, probably the head of her security detail, Chanyeol presumes, says, “We have to check if he’s clean, Ms. Park.” When Jihyo sends him a glare, he adds, “Your mother’s orders. I’m sorry, but we have to insist.”

“Fine,” she concedes, rolling her eyes. “But do it at my door. I don’t want the other guests seeing my guards groping another guest to search for hidden weapons.”

The guard who spoke up nods and then leads the way to Jihyo’s room. Chanyeol is flanked by the other guards, maybe five or six of them, maybe more from behind where he can’t see. He can easily take them on, but he knows that won’t be necessary. There won’t be a fight tonight—not a physical one, at least.

Through his earpiece, Chanyeol can hear his partner clapping and rejoicing. “Good work,” Sehun commends him. “Don’t worry about the earpiece being seen. It’s way too small to be noticed. They’re probably going to search your torso and limbs, anyway.”

Again, Chanyeol’s already aware of that. His partner’s been treating him like a novice all night, he’s noticed. Sehun’s going to get an earful from him when they get back to HQ.

When the check’s over and done with and Chanyeol is finally truly alone with his target, he assesses the room the second he steps inside. The room is as big as a hotel suite, maybe even bigger, but that’s something that Chanyeol already expected.

Just as his eyes begin to take every inch of the bedroom to search for what he’s after, a ringtone cuts through the silence.

Jihyo walks over to the table at the far side of the bed littered with various picture frames, other trinkets, and, more importantly, her phone. Chanyeol doesn’t know who’s on the other line right now, but that’s a trivial matter. What concerns him is how he’s going to snatch the device away from his target.

When the call ends and she finally puts the phone down, Chanyeol immediately makes his way toward her. He then slowly snakes his arms around her waist.

Jihyo gives in. Chanyeol notices this and gradually spins both of them around so that now his back is facing the table. He lifts his right hand off Jihyo’s waist, quickly reaches out behind him to grab the device, and slides it into his back pocket all the while his left hand draws lazy circles on her hip.

Jihyo keens into Chanyeol’s touch and just as she tilts her neck to the side to invite him in, Chanyeol retreats.

“I have to use the bathroom for a second,” he smiles sweetly, mostly for his small accomplishment in redirecting Jihyo’s attention to grab what he came for. But of course, his oblivious target doesn’t know that.

“Okay. It’s just behind the divider,” Jihyo says. She walks toward the bed and sits slowly, crossing her legs. “I’ll be here waiting.”

Chanyeol takes his time, walking as he normally does so that Jihyo doesn’t notice anything amiss. He locks the bathroom door shut once he’s inside. He takes a deep breath and then begins tinkering on his target’s phone.

He opens the browser, switches it to private mode, and then enters an unlisted website whose address is more of a code than a link. Once he’s in, he downloads the software designed to rummage through everything on the phone: text messages, phone calls, e-mails, the works, even those that are encrypted. In this case, specifically any kind of communication between Jihyo and her mother, who’s hot on NIS’ list—hot enough for the operation to be handed over to Chanyeol’s agency. The software is military grade and cannot be detected or removed by anyone other than the person at the other end of Chanyeol’s earpiece.

Sehun may be a handful, but he’s valuable. That, Chanyeol acknowledges.

“Nice work there, Agent Lux. Where’d you learn that from? David Blaine?”

“How did you see that?” Chanyeol asks. The download is at twenty-eight percent. “There aren’t any security cameras in the room. I checked the ceilings first.”

Sehun laughs, the annoying kind that he does when he feels like he has outsmarted Chanyeol. “It’s not on the ceiling. Ah, don’t worry ‘bout it. Let’s just say I managed to sneak in something in that room and that I have eyes on Jihyo right now. And that I’m the best agent ever.”

Chanyeol ignores that last part. The download is at fifty-two percent. Sixty-four. Seventy-one.

“Um, Lux…” Sehun begins to say.

“What?”

“The talking strawberry’s calling.”

“Talking strawberry?” Chanyeol asks, his brows furrowed in confusion. “Who—”

Oh.

 _That talking strawberry_.

Chanyeol sighs and internally scolds himself for not understanding what his partner meant. Ever since Baekhyun dyed his hair pink, Sehun’s been comparing him to the only pink fruit he can think of. And strawberries aren’t even _really_ pink.

Chanyeol pinches the bridge of his nose. He feels like he’s going to have a migraine in the middle of an operation.

He looks at the phone. The download is at eighty-seven percent.

“Don’t answer it,” he orders his partner. “We’re working.”

“You sure about that? ‘Cause the last time we ignored his call, he almost followed you to HQ and I don’t think…”

 _Fuck_. Sehun has a point.

“Okay,” Chanyeol cuts him off. The download is at ninety-five percent. “Put him through the line.”

Suddenly, it’s not Sehun at the other end of the line, but his roommate, who _always_ has impeccable timing.

“Are you forgetting something?” is the first thing that Baekhyun says. No hello, no greetings, no anything. Typical Byun Baekhyun.

“Uh…” Chanyeol replies intelligently.

Baekhyun’s sigh can be heard through the line, and Chanyeol knows that it’s not a good sign if his roommate is sighing that loudly. “It’s Friday,” Baekhyun says.

 _Fucking Friday._ “Ah, movie night,” Chanyeol finally remembers. “Sorry, I… I, uh, got caught in some work. I’ll finish up real quick and head home.”

“Where are you?”

“Um, Itaewon-dong,” he replies. That’s the truth.

“What are you doing there?” Baekhyun demands. _Damn, this talking strawberry has a lot of questions_.

Chanyeol lets out a soundless curse before replying. “Just some work for the internship,” he says. “You know, for the MOFA.” That’s _partly_ true. “You know, I’ll finish up work _faster_ if we hang up right now.”

The download is complete. Chanyeol knows he’s been in the bathroom for too long and that any moment now, Jihyo’s going to think that something’s wrong and knock on him. Or worse, she might call her guards in.

“You’re right,” Baekhyun finally retreats. “Okay, I’ll see you later.”

“Yeah, bye, see you later,” Chanyeol says as cheerfully as he can. The line beeps once and his partner is back on board.

Sehun clears his throat. “So… movie night, huh?”

“Shut the fuck up. I’m not in the mood.”

“Are you _really_ sure the two of you are just friends because—”

“If you don’t shut up right now I’m going to personally rearrange your limbs after this mission is over,” Chanyeol says. Silence resonates on the other line as Sehun finally drops the topic. Chanyeol slides Jihyo’s phone under his sleeve, ready to place it back on the table like nothing happened. “Give me a visual on the target.”

“Right, right,” his partner scrambles. “Uh, she’s… Oh. Holy shit. She’s, um, ready.”

“Radio silence in fifteen seconds,” Chanyeol orders.

“Roger that.”

“Turn off the camera in the room.”

“ _Miles_ ahead of you, Agent Lux,” Sehun replies. “I hope we get off work early tonight.”

Chanyeol takes off his earpiece and his bowtie, and then leaves the bathroom.

—

Chanyeol returns home just before midnight. He runs into Mrs. Kwon on the ground floor, who reminds him kindly about the rent. Chanyeol promises to take care of it tomorrow and Mrs. Kwon says okay with a good-natured smile as she always does.

Baekhyun was supposed to pay rent today after he got home from class, but Baekhyun forgets a lot of things that he’s supposed to do.

Chanyeol sighs as he inserts the key to their apartment. “Byun Baekhyun,” he mutters under his breath, shaking his head.

He opens the door with much difficulty because of the rust eating the hinges, and he makes a mental note to call maintenance to have it fixed as it seems like his roommate has no plans of doing so even after Chanyeol has reminded him of it dozens of times.

The TV is on when Chanyeol enters, blaring _Dead Poets Society_ in its “O Captain! My Captain!” scene. Baekhyun is sleeping on the couch with a blanket draped over him, his hands tucked under his cheek like a kid. He has his annoying moments, but he sure looks cute when he’s asleep, Chanyeol must admit.

Chanyeol walks silently into the kitchen so as not to wake his roommate up. He sees that the dish rack is empty and the rice dispenser is untouched, which means Baekhyun hasn’t eaten. Was he waiting for Chanyeol to get home so they could eat together?

Something pokes at Chanyeol’s heart. Guilt, most likely.

And so Chanyeol orders chicken delivery and begins measuring rice to make up for the dinner and movie night he missed. As he’s washing the grains, his roommate stirs from his sleep.

Baekhyun yawns rather loudly as he stretches, blinking away the remnants of sleep in his eyes. He zones out for a few more minutes, as he always does when he has just woken up, before walking into the kitchen to see what Chanyeol is doing.

“When did you get home?” Baekhyun asks in his rough, just-woke-up voice. His eyes still look clouded with sleep, heavy and jaded, and his pink hair is flying in all directions. It’s Chanyeol’s favorite look on him.

“Just a few minutes ago. I was gonna wake you up when the delivery arrives.”

Baekhyun drags his feet out of the kitchen and slumps into their small dining table. He yawns again and closes his eyes. Half-asleep, he asks, “What did you order?”

When the water finally clears, Chanyeol puts the bowl into the cooker and turns it on. “Honey chicken,” he replies, drying his hands on the towel hanging from the fridge door handle.

“I don’t like that. Why’d you order that?”

“It’s your favorite,” Chanyeol deadpans. He takes a seat across Baekhyun while waiting for the rice to cook and the delivery to arrive.

“Yeah, but I’m trying to lose weight and I can’t control myself around those things,” his roommate argues sleepily, pouting as he speaks. Chanyeol can see why Sehun calls him a talking strawberry. “Why did you order delivery, anyway? It’s twelve o’clock.”

“You didn’t eat dinner. Sorry for missing the movie, by the way. How was it?”

Baekhyun sprawls his right arm on the dining table and rests his head on it. “Dunno,” he mumbles. “I don’t remembering anything after the first ten minutes.”

Chanyeol couldn’t help but smile. Baekhyun looks cute when he’s asleep, but he’s even cuter he’s just woken up, trying to fight off the drowsiness that’s trying to pull him under once again.

Baekhyun has been Chanyeol’s roommate since freshman year, and Chanyeol isn’t sure when he started paying attention to even the smallest details about his roommate, like how childlike he gets when he’s roused from sleep.

It just happened, even though it shouldn’t have because Chanyeol has no time to look at someone like that. His line of work demands too much from him—time, energy, secrecy, among other things—so he knows for a fact that a relationship couldn’t possibly fit in there somewhere.

Still, the heart wants what it wants. Now that they’re just one semester away from graduating, Chanyeol is seriously considering doing something stupid, like confessing his feelings. But he has long accepted that he can never have normal relationships, at least while he’s still an agent. The dangers are very real in his job, and he doesn’t want to put Baekhyun through all of that.

“Do you still want to watch the movie?” Chanyeol asks.

“Sure, but… aren’t you tired? You just got back from your internship.”

As a matter of fact, Chanyeol _is_ tired. He’s always tired when he comes back from an assignment—or his ‘internship’, as his roommate calls it. But Baekhyun hasn’t eaten dinner and Chanyeol feels bad for missing movie night and watching a movie at home with one of his favorite people in the world doesn’t sound like a bad thing to do after a tiring night.

“I’m okay,” Chanyeol smiles. “Watching a Robin Williams film is always a good idea.”

After the chicken arrived and the rice is cooked, Chanyeol and Baekhyun eat on the couch with their feet propped up on their small coffee table while _Dead Poets Society_ plays again on the TV, and somewhere in the middle of the film, when their bowls are empty and their stomachs full, Baekhyun begins to play footsie with Chanyeol under their shared blanket.

—

The moment his professor asks the class to pass their papers, Chanyeol’s chest feels significantly lighter. Finals are at long last over and done with; finally one more thing off of Chanyeol’s mind.

Chanyeol wants to savor every moment of his shoulders not having to carry any weight—all four hours of it—because by eight this evening, he’ll be burdened with something again, another mission in just a span of a few weeks.

Baekhyun’s last exam doesn’t end until five o’clock. This gives Chanyeol enough time to walk from his department to their favorite spot on campus without rushing himself.

Neutinamu has numerous locations on Seouldae, but Chanyeol’s favorite is the one near the College of Music. For starters, their drinks are decent, but it’s also because it’s where Baekhyun and Chanyeol often hung out after class since freshman year. The café holds many memories, and in six months’ time, there may be no more opportunities to make new ones.

Graduation. That’s another thing that Chanyeol wants to get off of his mind.

On the one hand, graduating means that he’ll have the chance to work without worrying about anything else. Chanyeol isn’t particularly fond of school—who is?—not with the hectic deadlines and critical analysis papers and case studies that come with being a political science major. It’s all just a big distraction to him. On the other hand, graduating also means that he’ll have to move out of Haengun-dong as their lease expires by the end of February. They’ll have to move out of their apartment and Chanyeol doesn’t know what Baekhyun’s plans are after college and he hasn’t asked, mostly because he’s afraid that he’s not going to be a part of it.

Chanyeol’s not worried about finding a new place. Seoul never has a shortage of those, and even in the unlikely event that it does, he can always move to Gyeonggi-do where he can be near his sister.

He’s more worried about Baekhyun. More specifically, not being _with_ Baekhyun. When you’ve lived with someone for four years, it’s inevitable that they will grow on you, and it’s certainly not impossible with a person like Byun Baekhyun.

Sure, he can be an occasional pain in the ass, but Chanyeol couldn’t have wished for a better roommate. Chanyeol takes care of most things at home, and Baekhyun manages to return that care in his own special way—like how Baekhyun immediately knows Chanyeol isn’t in the best of moods just by hearing the way he breathes and immediately makes an effort to make him laugh, or how he remembers that Chanyeol doesn’t like bell peppers in his fried rice when it’s Baekhyun’s turn to cook dinner despite being forgetful of other stuff.

“Chanyeol,” an all too familiar voice says.

Baekhyun’s rectangular smile is the first thing that Chanyeol sees when he looks up and Chanyeol’s heart does this thing that it always does when Baekhyun is in close proximity.

“Hi. How was your exam?” he asks as Baekhyun settles on the seat across from him.

Baekhyun’s features contort into a scowl at Chanyeol's mention of something he’d rather forget. “I hope that old sot dies soon.”

Chanyeol couldn’t help but laugh; he knows that Baekhyun’s pertaining to his Literary Translation professor, Mr. Yoo, and he also knows that Baekhyun doesn’t mean it. He’s used to his roommate’s interesting choice of words when he’s in a bad mood.

Baekhyun casually reaches for Chanyeol’s iced peach tea and takes a generous sip as if he was the one who had bought it. Chanyeol doesn’t mind—he and Baekhyun are way past the stage of asking permission before sharing things.

“Why’d you wait for me here?” Baekhyun asks, nearly finishing the drink that was supposed to be Chanyeol’s.

It takes a while for Chanyeol to say something because he really doesn’t have an answer to that. They weren’t supposed to meet today, but his fingers were texting Baekhyun before he could even stop them.

“I don’t know,” Chanyeol decides to settle on the truth. “I just wanted to see you somewhere that’s not at home, I guess.”

Ever since the semester began to near its end, work just began piling up—both school and espionage related—and the only chance that Chanyeol gets to see Baekhyun is back at their godforsaken apartment.

Baekhyun’s face lights up at what Chanyeol just said, his eyes gleaming mischievously. “In other words, you missed me.”

 _Well, yeah, that’s another way to put it_ , Chanyeol wants to say, but of course, he can’t. So instead, he simply rolls his eyes at his roommate, keeping his true feelings to himself—like what he’s been doing for the past four years.

Baekhyun suddenly stands up and extends his arm to Chanyeol, urging him to get up as well.

“Where are we going?” Chanyeol asks as he rises from his seat skeptically.

“Well, you said you missed me, so let’s eat someplace nice.”

“I never said I missed you.”

Baekhyun shakes his head, dismissively waving his hand in front of him. “Same difference,” he insists, and Chanyeol knows he’ll never win when his roommate has made up his mind.

“Fine,” Chanyeol finally agrees. “But I have to clock in at MOFA by eight.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Now it’s Baekhyun’s turn to roll his eyes. “I’m starting to get suspicious of that internship. Well, I’m suspicious of the government in general, anyway.”

Chanyeol just offers a small smile. _Oh, you have no idea_ , he replies in his mind.

—

Chanyeol has roughly thirty minutes to spare before his scheduled briefing with his case officer, so he heads to the agent lounge to spend his last moments of peace and quiet with a steaming cup of coffee.

Unfortunately, Luhan has other plans.

“So when did movie night become a thing?” Luhan asks as soon as he sits beside Chanyeol on the couch. So much for peace and quiet.

“It’s been a thing of mankind for quite some time now,” Chanyeol deadpans, taking another sip of his Americano without paying so much as a glance at the annoying newcomer. “For someone who works in intelligence, you don’t seem to exhibit intelligence.”

Luhan ignores the jab and simply laughs. “I meant with Baekhyun,” he says as he leans closer to Chanyeol, adamant to get an answer. Luhan seems to be in a good mood, and when that happens, things don’t usually end nicely for Chanyeol.

While Chanyeol was debating whether or not he should indulge Luhan’s borderline invasive questioning, Sehun enters the lounge, stopping Chanyeol from arriving at a conclusion to his dilemma and—thankfully—distracting Luhan.

Sehun plops down beside Luhan with a sigh. He’s always this lethargic before briefings, which Chanyeol understands. Being an agent isn’t as glamorous as James Bond and Ethan Hunt make it to be. There are no _deus ex machina_ moments in a real operation; the margin of error is paper-thin and even the smallest of fuck-ups can be catastrophic.

“Ah, don’t be sad,” Luhan says in an attempt—a pathetic one at that, in Chanyeol’s opinion—to comfort Sehun. “Look on the bright side: this is our first mission together since our initiation assignment.”

Chanyeol nearly spits out his coffee.

“Well, you do have a po—”

“Wait,” Chanyeol interrupts Sehun. “You’re on the assignment too?”

Luhan’s lips form into a smile. _So that’s why he’s in too good of a mood._ “Jongdae called me just yesterday, something about a briefing tonight. So I called Sehun to tell him because I was so excited, but it turns out, it’s the same assignment,” he explains, his smile growing wider and wider. “Just like the old days.”

 _Great_ , Chanyeol says to himself. _Now I have two divas to deal with._

Sehun’s already hard to deal with, and adding Luhan into the equation spells out nothing but a headache for Chanyeol. Maybe that’s why the two of them go so well together.

Defeated, Chanyeol just sighs and finishes his Americano. “Why don’t good things happen to me?” he mumbles under his breath.

Just then, Jongdae bursts into the room, frantic and out of breath, as if he had climbed a dozen flights of stairs. When his eyes fall on the trio, he immediately walks toward them.

Chanyeol has never seen Jongdae like this: hair disheveled, tie loosened, eyes panicked. Whatever’s wrong, Chanyeol’s sure that it’s going to be his problem too.

“The briefing’s at eight o’clock, right?” Sehun asks, glancing at his wrist watch to check if he had lost track of the time.

Jongdae takes a moment to catch his breath before replying. “Director Kim is here.”

Something is _definitely_ wrong.

“Isn’t he supposed to be in Moscow to meet the director of the FSB?” Luhan asks. His smile has disappeared, his brows knitted.

It’s because the director isn’t usually present in case briefings. As a matter of fact, he’s rarely in the office—he’s always flying off to some country to meet other important people in the intelligence industry. When he’s in the country, it’s almost always because something’s awfully wrong, and Jongdae’s expression confirms just that.

“Minister Choi is also here. They’re waiting for you downstairs,” Jongdae adds. That finally gets the trio on their feet. “The mission is more complicated than we thought.”

—

Chanyeol has never liked the fourth floor of the MOFA Building in Jongno-gu.

For starters, it’s not four stories above ground. Hidden underneath the edifice that the public sees is the headquarters of the Elite Radical Intelligence Service, or ERIS, a buried intelligence agency of the South Korean government in all sense of the word. Chanyeol basically grew up in this place, and if that’s testament to anything, it’s that he’s been in the industry far too long for someone as young as he is.

The fourth level of the basement, or B4, as they fondly call it, is the most important level of their headquarters. It’s the floor where most of the agency’s important offices are in: the briefing rooms, the director’s office, and Ignis’ office.

Every time Chanyeol goes down to B4 for a briefing, he always passes by the elusive spymaster’s office. _Ignis_. Even his name is bewildering, like some mystery that no one has even come close to solving. Chanyeol has never seen their spymaster in all his years, and he definitely has a lot of those. Rumors say that no one has really seen Ignis too, with the exception of Director Kim.

But Ignis is the least of Chanyeol’s problems as of the moment.

Minster Choi is the first person Chanyeol sees when he enters the briefing room. The minister’s hands are clasped together on the table, his back straight and stiff against the chair. Gone is the usual smile on his face. Worry lines are prominent on his forehead.

As they file into the room, they are offered a small smile from Director Kim. He looks tired, like he just got off a nine-hour flight, which he probably did.

“Let’s begin,” the minister says when the three agents are seated.

Jongdae hands out case files to Chanyeol and his partners. With a few taps on his tablet, the room’s lights go dim and the screen behind Jongdae lights up, the logo of the agency rotating on the center.

Jongdae clears his throat before he speaks. “As you all know, The Blue House will be hosting a banquet tomorrow at 20:00 to welcome the arrival of Ambassador Zhang from Beijing.” A photo of the ambassador appears on screen. “We’ve received intelligence that there is a plan to assassinate him during the banquet.”

Silence fills the room at Jongdae’s words.

Director Kim stands up from his seat. “At first, we were just asked by the NIS to send our best men to be the ambassador’s special security detail. But after the intelligence report we received this morning, I’m afraid that this assignment is much more than that.”

Chanyeol swallows thickly as he tries his best to hide the trembling of his hands. This is the biggest mission that has been assigned to him so far.

“Does the MSS know?” Luhan asks.

Jongdae and Director Kim exchange a quick glance.

“They haven’t reached out to us,” Jongdae finally answers. “Although I’m pretty sure they were the first to receive the report before anyone else.”

Sehun closes his file case and raises his eyebrows at his case officer. “Then why don’t we reach out to them? Their ambassador’s life is in danger. We can’t just sit here and plan the assignment without their knowledge of the assassination plot.”

“It’s not that simple,” Director Kim begins to say, until his words are cut off when Minister Choi wordlessly stands up and walks toward the front of the room.

Sehun straightens up, and Chanyeol sees him fumbling with his nails underneath the table, a habit he does when he’s embarrassed. Chanyeol knows he means well and that he didn’t mean to question their superiors, but still, Chanyeol thinks Sehun should know better than to say something, especially with the minister in the room.

Minister Choi buttons his suit and runs his palms down through the hem, tidying up nonexistent wrinkles in the fabric. “To refresh everyone’s minds, our relations with Beijing are a bit questionable as of the moment,” he starts, making sure to look at Sehun. Sehun sinks further down his seat, which is a feat for someone with his height. “We can’t just simply share intelligence with them, especially one as sensitive as this. I think everyone in this room would agree that the MSS is one of the world’s most powerful intelligence agencies. Besides, if they _want_ us to know, they would’ve already told us the moment they received the report. There’s no reason for them not to tell us, because, as Agent Oh has pointed out, their ambassador’s life is at stake. That being said, there are many things that can go wrong if we don’t thoroughly think of our actions.”

“They’re watching us,” Director Kim puts it simply. “They’re watching us very closely. If anything goes wrong, they _will_ pin the blame on us, which can catapult Chinese and South Korean relations back as it were in the fifties.”

Minister Choi takes a seat once again, nodding at Jongdae to continue the briefing.

“They can also accuse the Americans of the assassination if it ever succeeds—which we will make sure it doesn’t—since they’re already suspicious of Washington anyway because of the THAAD deployment. The assassination will simply justify them burning Washington to the ground if they choose to do so,” Jongdae explains.

Jongdae taps on his tablet again. The screen switches to various photos of people, some of which Chanyeol recognizes from the summer he worked at Langley, with their names and covers indicted underneath.

“American spies,” Luhan points out. “What do they have to do with all of this?”

“We can’t trust anyone but ourselves in this mission,” Jongdae answers. “We don’t know who’s planning the assassination, but we have ample reason to suspect the Americans as well. If the plan succeeds and the Chinese retaliate—and they will—Washington can use that to legitimize their military presence here, and of course, our… _friends_ at the North will react negatively to that.”

Luhan props his arm on the table and rests his chin on his palm. “So these American agents… we have to keep an eye out for them? In case they’re the assassins?”

“Precisely,” Jongdae confirms.

Chanyeol clears his throat. It’s his first word of the meeting. “If we do anything wrong, it will be like the Korean War all over again.” The room goes incredibly still, as if everyone has stopped breathing. “The Americans will back us, the Chinese have the North’s support. That’s it, right?”

Director Kim looks at Minister Choi and the minister grimly nods.

That’s the only answer Chanyeol needs. “Fantastic,” he says sardonically. “What are our designations?”

—

“Looking good, Lux,” Sehun says through the earpiece.

Chanyeol looks at the nearest security camera and gives it the middle finger. “Shut up. I can’t believe I’m on sniper duty tonight.”

“Well, someone has to be.”

The wind whips at Chanyeol’s face. He crosses his arms in front of him in a useless attempt to shield himself from the cold and he couldn’t help but envy his partners who are probably warm indoors.

But it’s not the cold that’s really bothering Chanyeol. Even if he was inside, he’d still be probably shaking from anxiety because of the gravity of this mission. The three of them—him, Luhan, and Sehun—could be the difference between instigating another war.

Chanyeol takes a deep breath. He has already proven himself to the ERIS countless times, and yet he feels like he has to do it again, that this mission is the one that counts the most among all his other assignments.

“The roof is clear,” Chanyeol says to his partners. “For now, at least. How’s the party, M?”

“Clear. I have eyes on Zulu,” Luhan replies.

“And I have eyes on… well, everyone,” Sehun says. Chanyeol throws another crude gesture at the security camera near him. “I saw that!”

Chanyeol laughs. “I know.”

“Can the two of you please be serious?” Luhan scolds them through the line. “This is not the time to be dicking around.”

“Loosen up, ba—” Sehun stops abruptly. Chanyeol pretends that he didn’t hear Sehun almost call Luhan ‘babe’ over the radio during an assignment. “Loosen up, M. We’re not dicking around, we’re just trying to have a little bit of fun. We’re already nervous as it is.”

Chanyeol hears someone heave a deep breath through the line—Luhan, most likely. Chanyeol can’t really blame him for being too uptight. In a way, he’s right that this isn’t the time to be joking and throwing indiscreet middle fingers at security cameras. Should anything fall out of plan, their careers as agents are on the line, or worse, their lives. God knows that it’s certain there’s going to be at least one body count if the mission fails, and it’s going to be the ambassador.

Chanyeol looks up at the full moon hanging low in the night sky. He’s given up on believing in any higher being up there in the heavens a long time ago, but he feels like the occasion calls for a simple prayer.

 _Please_ , he begs at the cold air around him. He doesn’t even know what to say after that, and he hopes that whoever was up there would understand what he’s asking for even with just a single word from him.

“What’s the status now inside?” Chanyeol asks his partners.

“Dinner’s starting,” Luhan replies almost instantly. “He’s seated according to the plan sent to us by HQ.”

The sound of keys clacking follows Luhan’s response, and Chanyeol knows that Sehun’s going to town back at the station. “The interior looks clean,” Sehun announces after some time.

That’s when Chanyeol saw it—a shadow lurking in the dark, blending almost seamlessly into the night. _Almost_. Then Chanyeol saw the unmistakable silhouette of a sniper, easily twenty-four inches long. Chanyeol whips out his own pistol and shoots at the figure, and by the time he hears his bullet pierce through someone’s flesh, he feels something hot and wet dribbling down his left arm. A bullet had grazed his skin.

Chanyeol barely has time to relay information to his partners and he’s sure that Sehun saw it all anyway, so he leaves his post on the roof and jumps down to the ground to track down the shooter. He hasn’t gone far; Chanyeol made sure that he hit something.

Chanyeol’s lungs are burning despite the cold wind thrashing against his body as he speeds through the woods behind The Blue House. He manages to make out the words his partners are frantically transmitting over the radio: _Zulu is safe, Lux is in pursuit, he’s hounding naked, we need to deploy backup immediately._

But Chanyeol couldn’t care less if he’s running further and further away without cover. All that’s in his mind right now is that he’s managed to wound the shooter and that he’s slowed him down.

The forest grows thicker and thicker at Chanyeol’s every step. His vision can only register flashes of moonlight as he zips through the trees, stray branches indiscriminately hitting him, but he hardly feels their thwacks against his skin.

Chanyeol finally slows down when his eyes can no longer make out anything but pitch-black darkness in the middle of the forest. Even though he just ran hundreds and hundreds of yards, he controls the sound of his breathing to nonexistence in order to hear the leaves and twigs crunching under the shooter’s feet.

He runs immediately to his right when he hears an indisputable snap coming from that direction, only to be met with a discarded black bulletproof vest lying on the dirt. A pin on the vest catches what little moonlight it could reflect and gets Chanyeol’s attention. The small metal badge stands out on the black garment with its red-hot color, the emblem shaped like a triangle.

Chanyeol slips the pin in one of his pockets.

“I lost the shooter,” Chanyeol says to his earpiece. “He left a trail for me in the woods north of the complex.”

He kneels on the ground as he waits for help to arrive.

—

Chanyeol goes through the same thing after every assignment—receive medical attention if he has acquired wounds, check; get debriefed with his partners by their handler, check; and head to whatever place they call home as if nothing happened, check. The written report was always something for the following day.

When he arrives at their apartment, Baekhyun is boiling ramen in the kitchen. Of course, he immediately notices Chanyeol’s heavily-bandaged left arm and goes through his usual rapid-fire questioning that makes Chanyeol want to drape a pillow over his head.

“It’s just a minor wound,” Chanyeol insists at Baekhyun’s fifth question of what’s underneath the gauze. “I just hit myself… somewhere.”

Baekhyun glares at him as he angrily slurps his noodles. “You say that every time you get yourself wrapped up. You know, I’m starting to get suspicious.”

On any other day, Baekhyun’s statement might have scared Chanyeol. But Chanyeol couldn’t seem to get his mind off the shooter and the breadcrumb he left behind for Chanyeol to find.

Chanyeol takes the pin out of his pocket and twirls it between his fingers, wondering why the shooter bothered to take off his vest and leave the badge on it. Chanyeol’s not stupid; he knows for a fact that the shooter _wanted_ him to find the vest, but the question that’s been giving Chanyeol a migraine is the question why.

“What’s that?” Baekhyun asks as he passes by Chanyeol on the couch. “A souvenir from the MOFA?”

Chanyeol wishes he could say yes. “Just something a friend left behind for me,” he lies. “I’m not sure why it’s in the shape of a triangle, though.”

Baekhyun throws himself on the couch, nearly hitting Chanyeol’s bullet wound as he bounces off the springs. “Maybe your friend… just really likes triangles?”

The ringing of Chanyeol’s phone beats whatever reaction he was about to give his roommate.

Chanyeol’s heartbeat is drumming in his ears as he slowly reaches out for his phone on the coffee table. No one really calls him after an assignment; it’s an unspoken agreement within them at the agency—let agents have their time to themselves after a mission.

And just as he predicted, it’s an unlisted number.

“Aren’t you going to answer it?” Baekhyun asks him, and Chanyeol realizes that he’s been letting his phone ring for far too long.

He finally presses answer.

At first, nothing can be heard at the other end of the line but heavy breathing from the caller. The stirring in Chanyeol’s gut grows wilder in every drag of air he hears through the receiver, and just as he was about to end the call and dismiss the caller as a prankster, they finally speak.

“Nice work at The Blue House tonight, Agent Lux,” the unidentified voice says. Chanyeol’s entire body freezes in fear. No one outside of the agency knows his codename.

“Who is this?” Chanyeol asks, straining to keep his voice straight.

“That doesn’t matter,” the man replies, and for some reason, Chanyeol’s a hundred percent sure that the person he’s talking to right now is the same person he was trying to hunt down the woods earlier this evening. “My identity is not important. The only thing that matters right now is that I know who you are, I know who you work for, and I know how to hurt you.”

Chanyeol feels like his blood has turned to ice.

“Take a good look at your roommate, Agent Lux. His face will be the last you see before the two of you die.”

The line goes dead, Chanyeol finally hears the ticking, he grabs Baekhyun by the arm, and they both jump out of the window before everything behind them explodes.


	2. The Assassin

Chanyeol’s ears are still ringing from the blast as he hauls himself up from the gravel. The air reeks of smoke and his lungs feel like they’re on fire, but his bodily state is the last thing on his mind right now.

Baekhyun lies just a few feet away from him, coughing up a storm while he digs his palms onto the grit in an attempt to steady himself, which isn’t going so well from Chanyeol’s line of sight.

Chanyeol rushes to his roommate. Baekhyun only has a few scratches on his face and arms—no major injuries from what Chanyeol can see, though he still plans on doing a more thorough checkup when they arrive at the safehouse. Chanyeol soothes Baekhyun’s back as he helps him stand up.

“We need to go,” Chanyeol says in a rough voice. His mouth tastes like a chimney. “It’s not safe here.”

Baekhyun’s eyes flicker to his roommate’s for a split second before focusing on the scenery behind them, and Chanyeol turns around to see what he’s looking at: thick, black smoke is pouring out at the side of their apartment building, the side where their room was in.

The entire neighborhood is beginning to gather at the foot of the building, and Chanyeol knows that emergency services are going to arrive at any second. He needs to get Baekhyun and himself out of here before that happens. He needs to figure out exactly what’s happening and he needs to do it without the authorities knowing, like how he has always done it. This mission just became personal.

Chanyeol finally tears his eyes away from the burning building and gently tugs Baekhyun away from the thickening crowd. His roommate doesn’t object, or doesn’t have the energy left to object, as he lets Chanyeol guide him away from what has been their home for the past four years.

Chanyeol wills himself to weave the two of them through dark alleys despite feeling lightheaded from all the smoke he’d just inhaled. He knows this route like the back of his hand, practiced walking through it almost every day—the contingency plan he had drawn up in case something happened at their apartment. Chanyeol never realized that day would actually arrive.

They arrive at a small, dingy 7-Eleven soon after. The cashier looks at them curiously as they make their way toward the counter, but the part-timer doesn’t seem too surprised that two college students who have obviously gone through shit are inconveniencing a convenience store clerk at three o’clock in the morning.

“Can I help you?” the cashier asks, blowing a bubble with his gum after his question.

“A hard pack of Marlboro Red. The twenty-one kind,” Chanyeol replies.

The part-timer’s eyes grow like saucers as he almost chokes on his gum, quickly bending down the counter to retrieve an envelope-like black velcro pouch. His arms are shaking when he hands over the package, Chanyeol notices. _Must be his first displaced agent_ , Chanyeol thinks.

“There are fresh c-clothes at the b-back,” the cashier stammers. “The red trap door leads to your mode of transportation, i-if you’ll need one.”

Chanyeol nods curtly. “Thanks, kid,” he says, and then takes Baekhyun’s hand to guide him towards the back of the house.

Baekhyun still hasn’t said a word since they left Haengun-dong. As Baekhyun sits down on a plastic chair in the corner of the cramped supply room, Chanyeol notices that his roommate’s face is sickly pale and his entire body is quivering.

He’ll need to explain everything to Baekhyun now, Chanyeol realizes, and it’s going to be far from easy. How can he possibly untangle the life he’d sworn with his life to keep secret from the person he cares about the most?

Chanyeol heaves a deep sigh, deciding that it was a matter for later when they arrive at the safehouse. He rips the velcro pouch open and brings out an old, disposable flip phone—‘noir phones’, they call it back at HQ, because they only ever use it for dark situations.

Chanyeol opens the disposable, punches in a fourteen-digit number he knows by heart, and waits for a flat voice to come on the other side.

The operator picks up on the first ring. “Satcom eighty-five,” she says in monotone.

“Gwanak-gu is displaced and compromised.”

“Designator?”

“Lima-uniform-two-four.” The code feels strange as it rolls off Chanyeol’s tongue. It’s only the second time he ever had to use it, the first being his training completion ceremony years ago. He never thought he’d have to use it ever again.

“Connect to whom?”

“Victor-echo-one-four.”

“Switching,” says the operator.

There’s a long pause, and then a familiar voice finally comes on the line.

“This is Ventus.”

Chanyeol’s chest immediately feels significantly lighter at the sound of his partner’s voice. He always feels the safest with Sehun at the other end of the line. “Enable encryption.”

Another pause, followed by a series of clicks—the mechanical sound of encryption hardware ensuring that the call remains secure and no one outside of the agency will ever hear or have evidence of its existence.

“What the fuck happened, Yeol?” Sehun fires right away, not bothering to confirm encryption nor to use code names. Chanyeol assumes the explosion has made it to the national news. If this was any other assignment, Chanyeol would’ve scolded him for being careless and breaking protocol, but he reckons that this is a special case. Plus, it’s been a terribly long night.

“A caller as soon as I got home,” Chanyeol says. “Knows who I am, who I work for, and how to hurt me. His exact words.”

“Fuck.”

Chanyeol couldn’t have said it better.

His eyes find their way to Baekhyun. The caller’s threat echoes yet again in his ears: _I know how to hurt you_. A parade of questions flies through Chanyeol’s mind. How on earth could the shooter possibly have known Baekhyun? How did he see through Chanyeol’s cover? And more importantly, how can Chanyeol protect Baekhyun from all the dangers that are now surely on the way for the both of them?

“You’ll be heading to Red,” Sehun says after a while. It’s not even a question; it's more of like he’s stating the obvious, because he knows that Chanyeol has nowhere else to go.

“Yes.”

“Byun’s coming with you.” This time, Sehun’s statement comes off as an accusation, like bringing Baekhyun to their safehouse is the biggest sin on the face of the earth.

Chanyeol takes another deep breath. He doesn’t have the spirit to fight with Sehun right now. “I need to. He’s also a target. I told you what the caller said. He knows how to hurt me.” _And hurting Baekhyun is the surest way to hurt me_ , Chanyeol wants to add, but decides at the last second not to.

“Okay,” Sehun finally says, though he doesn’t seem entirely sold on the idea. “Luhan and I will be there at dawn. I’ll send a team to sanitize the apartment and throw the police a bone.”

“Thank you.”

There’s a sharp intake of breath on the other line, as if Sehun was preparing to say something, but the call abruptly ends. A robotic voice follows, informing that the disposable will self-destruct in five seconds.

Chanyeol throws the phone into the nearest trash can and waits until a hissing sound comes from the bin, followed by a small puff of white smoke. He walks slowly back to where his roommate is seated, making small, calculated steps so as not to startle him.

Baekhyun’s still shivering despite the warmth of the small room, and when Chanyeol kneels in front of him and takes his hands into his own, Baekhyun’s fingertips are as cold as a winter night.

“Baek…” he whispers, making sure that his voice is as soft as it can be. Chanyeol can only imagine what Baekhyun’s going through right now.

No response. Baekhyun’s eyes are distant and glassy.

“Baek,” Chanyeol tries again. Cupping Baekhyun’s cheek with his palm, he says, “We need to move again. I’m taking you someplace safe, okay?”

A few moments of silence passes until Baekhyun finally nods. Tears are pooling in his eyes, and Chanyeol’s heart feels like it’s going to shatter into a million pieces. He can handle any pain, but seeing Baekhyun like this—disheveled, trembling, scared… It’s a different kind of hurt for him. It’s the only kind of pain he’s not sure if he can manage.

“Let’s go,” Chanyeol says softly, and then helps Baekhyun on his feet.

Chanyeol promises he’s going to make whoever did this pay.

 

—

 

One of the biggest paradoxes in life is that there are certain things people buy that they hope they won’t ever have to use: fire extinguishers, insurance, pepper sprays. That’s exactly what Red is for Chanyeol.

The house was an investment among him and a few of his fellow agents, who were in the same recruitment class as him. Recruits get paid even during training, and so it wasn’t hard for any of them to shell out millions to buy a mansion in what is probably the most quiet neighborhood in all of Seoul.

It was mostly Luhan’s idea. He was always the smartest among them, if graduating at the top of their recruitment class was any proof, and it was him who pointed out that a safehouse is one of the wisest investments anyone in their field of work could ever have.

Red has never been used by any of them—until today.

Chanyeol has only been to the house twice, during the sale and during the turnover. He half expected the house to still be covered in white sheets, as no one has ever really lived here, but to his surprise, it is  well-kept. The underfloor heating is even on.

He looks around curiously, with Baekhyun following behind him. Somehow, Chanyeol knows that they’re not alone in the house.

“Baek, stay there,” he says. “I’m going to check something out.”

Chanyeol leaves the living room and silently pads into the kitchen, clutching the pistol that came with the black pouch at his side. He hears faint bubbling as he inches closer into the kitchen, and the unmistakable scent of _yukgaejang_ wafts through his nose. _Is someone cooking?_

Then Chanyeol finally sees who’s behind the stew.

“Mrs. Cho.”

The elderly housekeeper turns around, her smile just as wide as Chanyeol remembers. “Chanyeol, I didn’t expect you so soon.”

Despite her age, she still moves  gracefully in the kitchen, having no problem with moving the heavy pot of stew from the stove onto the dining table. She was their housekeeper at their training quarters, until the agency had to let her retire. She didn’t want to, actually; Junmyeon practically had to force her to retire. The woman just didn’t know when to quit, but it was also hard on them when she left. Their dorm would have blown up in flames long ago if it wasn’t for her.

Luhan was the one who contacted her when they were looking for a housekeeper for the safehouse. Chanyeol didn’t know that she actually accepted the offer.

“Luhan called me a couple of hours ago and told me to prepare the house for you and your guest,” she says as she transfers rice from the cooker into small bowls.

Chanyeol looks at his watch, furrowing his brows in confusion. “It’s almost five o’clock. What time did you come here?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Mrs. Cho laughs sweetly, dismissing Chanyeol’s question. “Why are you alone? Where’s your guest?”

“He’s…”

“He’s in the living room, isn’t he?” Mrs. Cho asks even before Chanyeol can finish his sentence, so Chanyeol just nods dumbly. “Set the table. I’ll fetch him.”

Chanyeol does as he’s told. Once he’s finished arranging the silverware, Mrs. Cho returns to the kitchen with Baekhyun, arms draped over his shoulder like a grandmother with his grandson.

“You didn’t tell me your guest was cute.”

Chanyeol nearly drops a set of chopsticks on the ground, but he doesn’t say anything; he knows Mrs. Cho’s just teasing. Thankfully, Baekhyun doesn’t say anything either.

Mrs. Cho instructs them to sit and then serves them the stew and side dishes. She gives special attention to Baekhyun, as he’s obviously still fazed by what happened. Baekhyun gives minimal reaction, only giving  quick thank yous and brief but polite nods to the old woman.

“What happened, child?” Mrs. Cho asks Baekhyun. “You seem so… terrified.”

“Mrs. Cho…” Chanyeol tries to interject, but as usual, she wouldn’t have it.

“The explosion in Gwanak-gu, was that the two of you?”

Silence resonates through the table. Baekhyun’s eyes fall down, seemingly finding a newfound interest in Mrs. Cho’s _yukgaejang_ , as he hides his hands under the dining table, and Chanyeol knows that he did that to hide their trembling.

Chanyeol swallows thickly once, and then finally says, “It’s complicated, Mrs. Cho.”

“That’s what you children always say,” she answers, her eyes beaming with obvious concern. “Please always stay safe. I don’t know what I’d do if anything happened to any of you.”

And Chanyeol believes her. She was never just a housekeeper, especially for Chanyeol. Mrs. Cho was the first woman in Chanyeol’s life that sincerely cared for him aside from his sister. She’s the closest thing to a mother Chanyeol will ever have.

Mrs. Cho glances at the wall clock and slowly stands up from her seat. “I must go now. It seems that… you have a lot to talk about,” she says, looking back and forth between the two boys. Chanyeol stands up as well, but Mrs. Cho waves him off. “No need to walk me to the door. I know this place better than you do. I’ve been cleaning this place every week for four years.”

“Thank you for the meal, ma’am,” Baekhyun says quietly.

“It’s nothing, child. Eat well,” she smiles. She begins to walk away from the dining room but turns back around after a few steps. “I’d say it gets easier… But it really doesn’t. I never sleep soundly knowing that these boys do what they do… That I could wake up one day to a world where they aren’t here anymore because of their job.”

Chanyeol sighs. “He… He doesn’t know yet.”

“You should’ve told him before you got him involved,” Mrs. Cho replies, and then she was gone.

Chanyeol takes his seat again, but suddenly the _yukgaejang_ doesn’t seem appealing anymore, even if it’s Mrs. Cho’s recipe. He looks at Baekhyun from across the table, who manages to take small sips of the soup.

“Baek, I don’t know where to start,” Chanyeol says after a few heartbeats. Mrs. Cho’s words are still ringing in his ear: _You should’ve told him before you got him involved_. She has a point, but to be fair, Chanyeol didn’t imagine that Baekhyun would be involved in a million years. Chanyeol has always made sure of that.

Baekhyun glares at him, like all the fear has melted off of his body and only anger remained. “What don’t I know yet, Chanyeol?”

For the first time tonight, Chanyeol is afraid. He doesn’t scare easily, but seeing Baekhyun like this, reeling with anger… Baekhyun hasn’t been this mad in all the years that Chanyeol knew him. And Chanyeol’s afraid that Baekhyun will resent him if he tells the truth about his job, about who he is, because he’s exactly the type of person one would stay away from.

 _Baekhyun would be right to stay away from me_ , Chanyeol thinks, but he doesn’t want that. It’s selfish, it’s true, but everyone has been selfish, or even just a fraction of it, when they’re in love.

Baekhyun’s eyes are still on Chanyeol, demanding an answer. “Your job… What the fuck is it? What was Mrs. Cho talking about? That stupid internship at the MOFA… It’s just a cover for something else, right? Something that involves getting our apartment blown to pieces?” he shouts, his eyes brimming with tears.

Chanyeol takes a deep breath. He knows there’s no way he can work around this. He needs to blow his own cover, because Baekhyun deserves to know. “I’m not saying this as an excuse, but there’s really a lot to unpack here. I told you, I don’t know where to begin.”

“Fine,” Baekhyun says, slamming his spoon on the table. “If you won’t tell me, even after I almost died tonight, then you can go fuck yourself.” He stands from the dining table and begins to walk away.

“Baek! Wait!” Chanyeol runs after him, yanking his wrist so that Baekhyun turns around to face him. “I know I’m stupid most of the time, but trust me when I say that I _know_ that you deserve to know. It’s just… We really have a lot of ground to cover here. And you’re not making it easier for me when you’re just yelling at me. So please… give me a moment to figure out where to start.”

Baekhyun pulls his wrist away from Chanyeol’s grip and wipes the tears off of his cheek.

Chanyeol heaves a deep breath, and finally says, “I didn’t lie to you about working for the MOFA. The only lie about it is that I’m not an intern. I’m an intelligence agent. I’ve been there for most of my life.”

The anger on Baekhyun’s face morphs into confusion.

“Last night, before I got home, I was at The Blue House,” Chanyeol continues. “I was part of an assignment to save the Chinese ambassador from assassination. We saved him, and I chased the gunman, but I lost him. And now… he found me. He found us. That’s why I took you here, because you’re not safe out there.”

Baekhyun stumbles backward as more tears stream down his face. Chanyeol rushes to steady him but he waves him off. “That’s… That’s where you got the wound,” he realizes. “And all the other times you came home patched up, that was… Oh my god.”

Chanyeol feels so helpless, seeing Baekhyun hurt—seeing him hurt because of him. Maybe he should’ve stayed away from Baekhyun when he had the chance, to spare Baekhyun from all of this, but it’s way too late for that now.

Silence follows after that, neither of them knowing what to say next.

Chanyeol wants to say more, explain further, but he’s afraid that he’ll hurt Baekhyun more in doing so. Chanyeol has always imagined how he would explain this to Baekhyun should the time come, not because he was really planning to but just out of pure thought, and he never intended for it to go like this.

“Why do you…” Baekhyun begins to say, but immediately changes his mind. “I’m tired. This… This is a lot to take in.”

 _I’ve barely scratched the surface_ , Chanyeol wants to say, but he just nods. It _is_ a lot to take in, especially from someone who Baekhyun thought he already knew so well. Chanyeol wants to assure him that he hasn’t lied about anything else, that he hasn’t lied about their friendship, but he also knows that they should call it a night.

“You can crash in my room,” Chanyeol offers. “Upstairs, first door on the left. I’ll… I’ll sleep on the couch. Or wait until the others get here, whichever comes first.”

Baekhyun gives him no more than a nod and then heads off.

 

—

 

Chanyeol wakes up to the smell of bacon and the sound of laptop keys clacking.

He peels himself off of the couch to find Luhan making breakfast and Sehun typing away on his computer, but the first person he was really hoping to see when he wakes up is nowhere to be seen.

“Baekhyun ate already,” Sehun answers his silent question without taking his eyes and hands off of his laptop. “He just went straight back upstairs without saying anything, but he did wash his own plate. I see the talking strawberry knows how to carry his own weight, at least.”

Chanyeol groans as he rubs the sleep off his eyes. “What did you say to him? Did you say something weird?”

Luhan comes out of nowhere, sliding a plate of bacon over the coffee table. “We just gave him the usual witness debriefing and explained to him things that he needed to know. No need to shit your pants. He took it remarkably well, I must say.”

“Last night was a different story,” Chanyeol scoffs and then takes a strip of bacon and devours it in three bites.

“No doubt,” Sehun comments, still very busy with something. “If it went well, you wouldn’t have slept on the couch.”

“Hey, I was waiting for the two of you—”

Chanyeol’s excuses are cut short when a loud _ping_ blares from Sehun’s laptop.

“Well, that was easier than I expected,” Sehun says smugly, leaning back in his seat and putting his hands behind his head. “And now… we wait.”

“What did you do?” Chanyeol raises an eyebrow as he takes Sehun’s laptop from him.

Chanyeol can recognize a hack when he sees one. He knows the basics of it, but he wasn’t trained like Sehun was. Early on in their training, they were tested on their strengths, and it was from there where Chanyeol realized that computers weren’t really his thing.

Sehun, on the other hand, was phenomenal. He barely broke a sweat when they were tasked to build a covert communications network, to delete it, and then to rebuild it in twelve hours or less. Sehun completed the activity in forty-three minutes. From then on, he was practically untouchable in the agency, except for his recruitment class. He was still the youngest among them, after all.

“I don’t know exactly what is going on but I’m pretty sure you hacked something,” Chanyeol says. “Or someone.”

Sehun takes a strip of bacon for himself and then bites into it, smirking as he chews. “In your distress call using your noir phone, you mentioned a caller, right? Well, it’s a good thing that I created a program that can identify someone using their voice—I mean, not _exactly_ identify, but I designed it to find precise matches of similar sound waves and the wavelengths of those sound frequencies, and it’s pretty much a walk in the park to obtain information after that.”

“When did you have the time to build all of this?” Luhan asks, his brows furrowed.

Sehun simply shrugs. _That cocky asshole_ , Chanyeol thinks, but perhaps Sehun has the right to be proud this time around. “I get bored easily. You’d be surprised how many programs I’ve designed over the past few months,” Sehun says.

“I don’t get it. My phone was destroyed in the explosion. There’s no way you can have a copy of that call,” Chanyeol points out. He adds, “Besides, my phone’s encrypted.”

Sehun takes another bite of his bacon. “I don’t need your phone. All I needed was to hack the Ministry of Information and Communication and I was good to go. As for the encryption… You know nothing’s really _encrypted_ for me,” he says with a wink.

Luhan’s jaw literally drops open. “That’s…”

“...amazing,” Chanyeol finishes for him.

“Well, what can I say?” Sehun smiles even wider.

“How long will it take?” Luhan asks.

Sehun squints his eyes as he makes mental calculations in his mind. “Hard to say. I’ve only tested this program several times, and it’s all on people I personally know, so, you know, less sound waves to find a perfect match with. But I don’t know the assassin. If he’s good at what he does, he has probably anticipated that his phone call with Chanyeol will be tracked one way or another, so he has most definitely set up a lot of decoy calls to throw us off scent. I’d say… at least three days? Or more. I honestly have no idea.”

Chanyeol hands the laptop back to Sehun. “That’s better than nothing, I guess.”

“You bet it is,” Sehun agrees. “You’d be lost without me.”

As much as Chanyeol hates to admit it, his partner has a point.

Just then, the sound of footsteps coming down the staircase resonates through the living room. Baekhyun peeks into the room curiously like a shy kid who’s been to his friend’s house for the first time.

Chanyeol jumps to his feet, startled for no apparent reason. “Baek,” he says. “Did you… Did you need something?”

Baekhyun shyly shakes his head and hides his hands behind his back. “I just wanted to ask if I can look around the backyard. I think I need some fresh air after… what happened last night.”

“This is a safehouse, Baekhyun. You can do whatever you like, just not leave the house because we can’t protect you out there,” Luhan says kindly. Chanyeol finds this odd, as Luhan isn’t usually kind to strangers. “Mrs. Cho did an excellent job tending the garden. You should check it out.”

Baekhyun nods once and then disappears into the kitchen to head out the backdoor.

“Why are you so… _nice_ to him?” Sehun asks with a sour face.

Luhan laughs so hysterically that it almost hurt Chanyeol’s ears. “Are you jealous or something?” he asks, holding his stomach in as he cackles.

Sehun glares at Luhan some more and then hurls a throw pillow at his face with so much force that it’s scary from Chanyeol’s vantage point. Thankfully, Luhan deflects the pillow just in time before it does any kind of damage.

Seeing Sehun and Luhan like this always does things to Chanyeol’s heart. On the one hand, he’s extremely happy that two of his closest friends in the world have found happiness with each other, but on the other hand, it serves as a reminder of how he’s never had the chance to be with someone like how Sehun and Luhan are with each other.

In Chanyeol’s opinion, Sehun and Luhan got lucky. It’s not easy for anyone with a job like theirs to be in a relationship, given the myriad of sacrifices it entails; it just so happens that Sehun and Luhan fell in love with each other, which made it a hundred times easier for the both of them, as they already know what the other is going through without having to explain their secret lives exhaustively.

Sometimes Chanyeol asks the stars why they aligned in such a way that made him fall in love with Baekhyun, or made him fall in love at all. But, in a way, Chanyeol’s thankful for it. Not everyone is lucky enough to find something they truly love in such an uncaring world.

Chanyeol slips out of the living room quietly while Sehun and Luhan annoy each other to death, and then follows Baekhyun outside.

Baekhyun’s sitting cross-legged on the grass when Chanyeol stepped out. He looks beautiful, Chanyeol thinks, with the sun shining down on his skin and the wind ruffling his pink hair. The color has faded a lot since Baekhyun first colored it, but the softer shade is kinder to him, making him seem much younger than he already looks.

Chanyeol sits down beside him, allotting just enough space in case he hasn’t completely cooled down yet from their conversation last night. Baekhyun doesn’t look at him but heaves a deep sigh as if to acknowledge his presence.

They sit side by side wordlessly for a few moments, just listening to the soft chirping of birds. It’s a sound one doesn’t usually hear in a bustling city like Seoul, and its effect is incredibly calming. It’s as if they’ve been transported to a different time and place, when and where everything is much simpler than the reality they’re living in right now.

Finally, Chanyeol decides to break the ice. “This is probably a stupid question but… did you sleep well last night? I hope you slept, at least.”

A ghost of a smile plays on Baekhyun’s lips, and Chanyeol takes that as a good sign. “I slept after tossing and turning for a while,” says Baekhyun. “I mean, how couldn’t I? The bed was so soft I was sure I was going to melt onto the floor.” Now that sounds like the Baekhyun that Chanyeol knows. “Is this your house?”

“Not exactly. I bought it with Sehun, Luhan, and a couple of other friends as a safehouse. You know, a place where we could regroup if we ever get compromised.”

Baekhyun slowly nods as he continues to look straight ahead. “And I’m guessing you guys call it Red because of the high red brick wall around the house.”

Chanyeol allows himself a small chuckle. “Well, we need code names for almost everything.” Another wave of uncomfortable silence rolls in, but Chanyeol has had enough of that. Sighing, he says, “Baek, about last night… I want to explain more if you—”

“It’s okay,” Baekhyun cuts him off immediately. “Luhan already did over breakfast. I just… I still need to digest everything I heard, everything I saw last night.”

“Okay.”

“And Yeol, I—I don’t think I can talk to you normally until after I’ve made up my mind about… all this madness.”

Chanyeol’s heart breaks at that. He already knew that things between him and Baekhyun will change after Baekhyun learns the truth, but hearing Baekhyun say that already makes Chanyeol feel like he’s lost him. And he wouldn’t blame Baekhyun if that’s what he wants.

“Okay,” Chanyeol repeats, because he really can’t say anything else.

Baekhyun stands up from the ground and heads back inside without another word.

 

—

 

The next few days pass by painfully slow for Chanyeol.

He isn’t used to not speaking with Baekhyun, especially when they’re just a few feet apart from each other, but he’s willing to give Baekhyun everything, even if that includes some space.

He tries to distract himself by training—throwing knives, running countless laps around the neighborhood, and even asking Sehun to spar with him (even though he’s fully aware that hand-to-hand combat isn’t Sehun’s strongest suit) because he knows Luhan will more or less beat his ass. Chanyeol has always used training to get his mind off of things, even back when he was a recruit.

Baekhyun watches him sometimes, silently eyeing him in the corner as he hurls knife after knife at the makeshift target he has set up in their backyard. He never says anything, just intently observing Chanyeol until Chanyeol notices him, and then leaves like he’s never been there in the first place.

“He’ll get over it,” Luhan tells him one time while making lunch and Chanyeol was setting the table. “He’s just in shock.”

Sehun scoffs from the dining table, nibbling on potato chips, helpful as ever. “It’s been five days. He’s not ‘in shock’. He wants to stay away from Chanyeol.”

“Gee, thanks,” Chanyeol says. He isn’t sure if Sehun’s joking, but it hurts nonetheless.

Luhan lowers the heat and lets the soup simmer for a while. “Why do you hate him so much?” he asks Sehun, leaning back on the kitchen counter and crossing his arms over his chest. “What did the kid ever do to you?”

“I just think he’s a liability,” Sehun shrugs as he pops another chip into his mouth. “He knows pretty much everything about us. We’re basically compromised.”

Luhan rolls his eyes at his boyfriend. “He’s a civilian. And a witness. We’re legally obliged to keep him safe. That’s why he’s staying here with us.”

“Just because I’m _legally obliged_ to protect him, doesn’t mean I have to like him and change my opinion on—”

A loud _ping_ from Sehun’s laptop interrupts what he was about to say, and everyone freezes. His computer has been on ever since he started the hack and ran his program, and it’s only today that it has done something like that.

“What is that?” Luhan asks.

The three of them rush to the living room where Sehun’s laptop has been sitting since the morning he started tracking the call. Chanyeol’s wondering how the laptop hasn’t blown up by now, but he pretty much trusts that Sehun knows his computer better than Chanyeol ever will.

“That scan’s complete,” says Sehun. He scrolls through the call logs that have been registered in his program that match the sound waves of Chanyeol’s phone call with the assassin. There’s at least five thousand results.

Chanyeol can’t help but shake his head. “It’ll take us forever to listen to every single call to obtain information about the caller.”

Sehun just gives him a knowing smirk, and Chanyeol knows that, as usual, Sehun’s already a dozen steps ahead of him.

“Alright, then,” Chanyeol concedes. “When do you think you’ll be finished?”

Sehun begins typing away on his laptop, faster than anyone’s eyes could keep up with. It’s like he was born to do this job, be the kind of spy behind a screen, the one who keeps operations glued together. Chanyeol—and even Luhan—is too proud to admit it, but without Sehun doing what he does best, most of their assignments wouldn’t even reach half of success.

“Tonight, if you stop bothering me right about now,” says Sehun. “I’m not sure of the exact time, but I’m certain I can find him by tonight. Both of you need to be ready to go the moment I pin him down. We can’t waste time.”

Chanyeol and Luhan exchange a look, and then rush to their rooms to prepare their weapons.

Chanyeol’s hand was about to turn the doorknob to his room when he quickly realizes that Baekhyun is its current occupant. He knocks softly and waits for an answer, but when it doesn’t come, he slowly opens the door, assuming that Baekhyun’s asleep.

But when he enters, Baekhyun’s lying on the bed while staring at the ceiling. His eyes are bloodshot, like they were the night they first got here, and Chanyeol’s heart hurts anew. He isn’t used to seeing Baekhyun like this, and he doesn’t think that he ever will be.

“Baek, what’s wrong?” Chanyeol asks gently, making small steps toward the bed.

“Am I a liability?”

Chanyeol winces, as if he’s been punched in the gut. “How much did you…”

Baekhyun sits up on the bed and wipes tears off his face rather harshly. “I heard it all, actually. Sehun… he doesn’t like me, does he?” he feigns a chuckle, but Chanyeol sees through it. “I mean, I get it. I _am_ a liability. I was asking a rhetorical question. But I never asked to be part of any of this. I was dragged into this and I didn’t have a choice.”

That, Chanyeol is aware of. Sehun, unfortunately, sometimes struggle to be understanding.

Chanyeol kneels in front of the bed. He takes Baekhyun’s hand, and when Baekhyun doesn’t swat him away, he lets out a sigh of relief. “I know that, Baek. Sehun knows that too, it’s just… We’re in a difficult situation right now. We can be disavowed if we make the wrong move, so we have to calculate our every step. Sehun just doesn’t have anybody to blame right now, and you’re the most convenient scapegoat for him right now because you…”

“I’m not one of you. I’m not a spy, I can’t fight, I’m not any of that shit.”

“…you haven’t known us as long we’ve known each other,” Chanyeol corrects him. “You’re not a burden to any of us, so you don’t have to be sorry just for being here. As a matter of fact, we’re the ones who have to apologize. Me, especially.”

“You already apologized,” Baekhyun whispers so quietly that Chanyeol almost didn’t hear it.

Chanyeol bites back a small smile, softly rubbing the back of Baekhyun’s palm with his thumb. “You still haven’t accepted my apology.”

Baekhyun finally looks at Chanyeol, the first time he has stared straight at Chanyeol’s eyes since the accident. Baekhyun’s eyes are shaking, and while they’re still red from all his crying, Chanyeol couldn’t help but think that those eyes are the ones he’ll gladly get lost in.

“You’re going out tonight to find whoever placed the call,” Baekhyun says matter-of-factly. Chanyeol nods. “Then it depends on whether you come back to me in one piece if I’ll accept your apology or not.”

This time, Chanyeol lets himself smile. Baekhyun will be Baekhyun, and Chanyeol knows that’s his way of reminding him to stay safe. Chanyeol stands up from the floor and begins to prepare himself and his weapons for tonight’s mission, all the while Baekhyun’s words run through his mind like a broken record.

_Come back to me._

 

—

 

The last time Chanyeol set foot on the infamous Hooker Hill in Itaewon-dong was six years ago during his stint as a nightcrawler for the agency, one of his first few assignments after completing his training.

Rookies were usually sent to places like these to ‘toughen them up’, like Jongdae had explained to Chanyeol, but Chanyeol knows that they only sent newly-inaugurated agents to nightcrawl in Seoul’s red-light districts to do jobs that no high-ranking agent would do given their position in the agency.

“I have bad memories with this place,” Luhan says as they walk through a narrow street lined with brothel after brothel on either side.

Chanyeol sighs. He almost forgot that Luhan had spent his first year in this street as well. “You and me both,” he acknowledges. “This place still reeks of rubber and booze. I wonder why they can’t smell the sin all the way down the hill.”

But Chanyeol is thankful that he had spent his first year in Hooker Hill, because if not, he wouldn’t have earned the respect of his directors. In the span of just twelve months, Chanyeol has helped the government apprehend several officials who still had ties to prostitution in the city.

“You know how they don’t care about prostitution being illegal unless it’s one of their own patronizing it,” Luhan points out, and Chanyeol does understand that corruption is still very much rampant within the government. Chanyeol would be stupid if he wasn’t aware of it when he works underground for them. “Hooker Hill is one of Seoul’s best-kept open secrets.”

“Be careful what you say on the streets,” Sehun’s reminds them sternly through their earpiece. “You never know who’s listening.”

Luhan cackles loudly in contempt. “We’re on the verge of winter. The street’s empty because no person in their right mind would climb up here to sleep with whores in this weather. Besides, only foreigners go here. No one here speaks a lick of Korean except for the _mama-sans_ and their women.”

Chanyeol doesn’t like siding with Luhan on most things, but he has a point. “He’s right. We’re even getting looks from _mama-sans_ outside their bars. They probably think we’re some dumb high school kids who didn’t know that this place is off-limits for locals.”

“Well, suck it up because this is where the track ended. Besides, it’s not like neither of you have been there before,” says Sehun. A rapid series of beeping then echoes through the line, and Sehun exclaims, “Stop! There. The building on your left. That’s it.”

Chanyeol’s head immediately snaps leftwards and confusion settles down on his face the moment he realizes where the track led them to.

“Is that…” Luhan begins to say.

“Polly’s Kettle,” Chanyeol confirms. “Are you sure this is it?”

“Yes. The signal’s coming from upstairs,” Sehun asserts.

Chanyeol and Luhan exchange a confused look, and then enters the establishment hesitantly.

Not much has changed since their last visit to Polly’s, except maybe for the fact that the music’s significantly fainter than it was before, probably because there aren’t any expats around to entice with booming bass. The neon lights are still as blinding as ever, and Chanyeol had to squint to see in the drowning shade of blue that coated the room.

An old _mama-san_ comes out of nowhere and begins yelling at them. “We don’t serve locals! Go home, kids. You aren’t supposed to be here.”

Chanyeol probably had a hard time seeing, but he could recognize that voice anywhere. “Ms. Noh?” he asks. “You’re still here?”

A wave of recognition washes over the old woman’s face, her eyes growing as wide as saucers. “Chanyeol? Luhan? What on earth are you kids doing here? Weren’t the two of you transferred?”

Chanyeol purses his lips, racking his brain for an excuse. Ms. Noh was nothing but kind to him when he was assigned here, mostly because he told her that he works for the government and could shut the entirety of Hooker Hill down if he really wanted to, but she was kind nonetheless. She even gave Chanyeol a heads up whenever she recognized an official coming inside her brothel.

But Chanyeol couldn’t help but think that this is some kind of sick joke, that the trace ended here in Polly’s out of all the brothels in Hooker Hill, that it led to Ms. Noh out of all the _mama-sans_ in the red-light district.

Is she harboring the assassin that was sent to kill the ambassador, and then Chanyeol?

“Don’t answer that, Lux,” Sehun instructs Chanyeol through the line. “I’m looking into it right now. Agent M, distract the lady for a while.”

Luhan acts quickly on his feet. “Actually, we’ve just been assigned to smoke out a four-star general that frequents the area,” he lies. “Do you mind if we take a look? Don’t worry, we’ve been searching every brothel all night. We’re not singling you out.”

The old brothel-keeper doesn’t look entirely convinced, but she nods anyway. She’s probably still afraid of Chanyeol’s bluff all those years ago. “Go ahead,” she says. “Just don’t bother any of the girls. I don’t think you’ll find anything here, though.”

Chanyeol and Luhan thank her quickly and then walks deeper into the brothel, but unsure where to go from there.

After a few minutes, Sehun finally gets back to them. “The signal isn’t coming from inside the building,” he says. “It’s on… the roof.”

“The roof?” Luhan asks incredulously. “Why the fuck would it be on the roof?”

Then something clicks inside Chanyeol’s head, as if the blue neon lights were replaced with normal ones that made everything so much clearer. “There’s an unused shed on the deck up there,” Chanyeol realizes. “I used to scout the street from up there. The assassin must be using it without Ms. Noh knowing.”

“Is it safe to go up there?” Luhan asks Sehun. “Is the trace alive right now or are we still tracking his last phone call?”

“The tracker’s dead. He’s not there,” Sehun answers, and that’s all it takes for Chanyeol and Luhan to dash to the fire exit and run up the stairs leading to the roofdeck.

Sure enough, there’s a small shed on the far side of the deck just as Chanyeol said. The two agents slowly walked toward it, clutching their pistols at their sides in case Sehun’s wrong about the tracker being offline. Chanyeol kicks the door open while Luhan covers him, but there’s no assassin inside, only around a dozen laptops open.

“Ventus, are you seeing this?” Luhan asks Sehun, knowing that his contacts are connected to one of Sehun’s screens. “Is this piece of shit a hacker too?”

“Yes, I have a visual,” Sehun confirms. “He’s not a hacker… Hang on, the call I’ve singled out from thousands will finish decrypting at any moment now.”

Chanyeol looks around the shed. Despite the space being small, whoever’s running base here sure knows how to maximize it. From the looks of the gadgets meticulously wired all around the room, Chanyeol assumes that the assassin has been here for a while.

The sound of keys clacking stop in their earpieces. “I got him,” Sehun announces. “He’s… one of our own?”

Chanyeol and Luhan stop dead in their tracks. Even Sehun sounds surprised, and not much surprises any of them anymore.

“What do you mean?” Luhan asks.

“Well, he _used_ to be an agent for the NIS,” Sehun clarifies. “Kim Jongin, also known as Agent Kai. He was disavowed three years ago because…” he trails off, the sound of typing echoing through the line in the absence of his voice. “Holy shit.”

 _That doesn’t sound good_ , Chanyeol thinks. “What? What is it?” he asks urgently.

“He was discovered as a mole for the Americans,” Sehun says, and it seems as though ice has replaced blood in Chanyeol’s veins. “Quick, find a port in any of the computers and insert the emergency flash drive I gave you. We need to hack this assassin’s shit so we know what he knows. I hope I’m wrong about this…”

Chanyeol already knows what Sehun’s thinking, and he hopes that he’s wrong too, because if he isn’t, then Minister Choi’s worst nightmare has already been confirmed.

Chanyeol pulls out a small rectangular drive from one of his pockets and slides it into a port, just as Sehun has instructed.

“Okay, I’m in—” Chanyeol hears Sehun say, and then…

 _BANG_.

Something pierces through Chanyeol’s left arm, just below the bullet wound he got a few days ago at The Blue House. Chanyeol clutches his arm as the echo of the gunshot deafens him, white circles dancing in his vision from the excruciating pain.

He hears someone calling him, but the sound is too muffled in his ears for him to confirm if it’s Luhan or someone else. Chanyeol falls to his knees, the scent of his own blood rushing to his nose, but no matter how many breaths he takes to regain his composure, the pain just overpowers his lungs again and again.

Chanyeol struggles to focus on the two black blurs in front of him. In a split-second of clarity, he realizes that those two black blurs are Luhan and some other guy…

_The assassin._

Chanyeol does everything he can to stand up on his feet and will the throbbing in his arm to subside, but before it does, he throws himself onto the assassin and punches him square in the jaw. The sound of a bone cracking follows after that, and before Chanyeol could decide whether it was the assassin’s jaw or his own hand, the masked man kicks him hard right in the gut and Chanyeol flies backwards, crashing a few computers in his landing.

Chanyeol wheezes as he struggles for air, the back of his throat tasting an awful lot like blood. He gets up again despite his world spinning and his entire body aching like a bruise because he simply has to. All Chanyeol can think about right now is that he won’t let that man kill Luhan.

He stumbles outside the shed to find the assassin heaving deep breaths just a few feet away from where Luhan is on his knees spitting blood. The adrenaline somehow overpowers everything else and once again Chanyeol hurls himself onto the masked man, choking the assassin’s neck with his right arm.

But the assassin knows where he shot Chanyeol and uses that to his advantage, jabbing his fist into Chanyeol’s bullet wound with so much force that Chanyeol is forced to let him go as he falls on his back. Chanyeol screams in pain, the sound probably loud enough for the entire Yongsan-gu to hear.

The masked man pounces on Chanyeol while he’s on the floor, driving his fist over and over again through Chanyeol’s face, each punch hurting more than the last.

At that moment, the frightening thought of death crosses Chanyeol’s mind. _This is how I’ll go_ , he thinks, _caught off-guard by a bullet from my back and beaten to death by the asshole that tried to hurt Baekhyun_.

Baekhyun.

Chanyeol’s holding on for dear life onto the last string of consciousness he has, trying his best to imagine Baekhyun’s face as perfectly as he can before he slips away. _This is how I’ll go_ , he thinks again, _but maybe if Baekhyun’s face is the last thing I see before I do, then maybe it’s not such a bad way to go._

He hopes that Baekhyun could forgive him for not being able to keep his promise of coming back to him.

Chanyeol closes his eyes and lets the pain win. The last thing he hears before everything goes dark is another gunshot, and the reverberating sound carries him away.

 

—

 

The next time Chanyeol opens his eyes, he’s in a different time.

He wakes up to a face that reminds him of a particularly hot and humid summer in Virginia and the many lazy afternoons spent looking out at Chesapeake Bay when the sun would paint the sky with brilliant yet soft hues of pink, orange, and yellow. The phantom taste of the oysters they sell at Chick’s lingers on his tongue, the flavor bringing back many fond memories of spontaneous trips down the beach despite the mountains of paperwork sitting on their desks back at Langley.

“Yeol?” the face says softly.

His voice is as soothing as Chanyeol remembers, like a hot cup of peppermint tea during a thunderstorm. Chanyeol has fallen asleep so many times to that silvery sound of that voice and has woken up to it every day that followed, until he didn’t anymore.

The pain from the memories reels Chanyeol back into the present.

“Yeol?” the face says again, this time with its voice laced with concern. “Are you awake?”

When Chanyeol’s eyes are fully open, he realizes that he’s not back in Virginia. His entire body aches like a bad bruise, the smallest of movements bringing him the biggest of pains. His lungs hurt every time he takes even a short breath.

“Hey, hey. Don’t move. You’re still hurt.”

“What are you doing here, Minseok?” Chanyeol meant that question to come out as curt, but instead it came out rough and tired, no thanks to the fact that his throat felt like sandpaper rubbing against each other.

Minseok heaves a deep sigh and puts down the pocketbook he was reading. “Sehun didn’t know who else to call when Luhan asked for immediate extraction. So I came.”

“Bullshit,” Chanyeol spits back at him. “Sehun has everyone else in the world to call. Why would he call you, out of all people? Why would he ask help from someone who left us without saying goodbye?”

Minseok says nothing and just looks at Chanyeol blankly. When they were still together, Chanyeol could never really make out what Minseok was feeling because of those cold, cat-like eyes, and even until now, he still has no idea.

Minseok stands up from the chair beside Chanyeol’s bed. “We’ll talk about that when you’re not wrapped up like a wound that grew a body,” he says airily. “Sehun and Baekhyun will check on you from time to time. I need to take care of Luhan too, and quite frankly, he’s more grateful than you are.”

“I don’t need you to take care of me. I don’t need you at all.”

Minseok sighs once again and stares at Chanyeol one last time. “Yes you do, Yeol. You do,” he says, and then heads to the door to leave.

When Minseok opens the door, Baekhyun’s waiting outside with an unplaceable expression painted on his face. Minseok just gives him a small nod and then walks past him.

Baekhyun enters the room meekly. His eyes travel anywhere but Chanyeol’s face, and Chanyeol can only assume that he knows who Minseok is.

But despite all that, seeing Baekhyun almost brings Chanyeol to tears because Chanyeol never thought he would ever see him again. Chanyeol managed to keep his promise, after all.

“H—how are you feeling?” Baekhyun asks, finally breaking the ice.

“You know I’d be lying if I said I feel fine,” Chanyeol attempts a small chuckle, but his lungs aren’t so sold on the idea, so he just gives Baekhyun half a smile. “How long have I been out?”

Baekhyun sits on the chair Minseok was just in a few moments ago. “A few days,” he replies. “I’ve lost count, actually. I don’t know.”

That’s when Chanyeol notices the bags under Baekhyun’s eyes, like he’s done nothing for the past couple of days but stay up late. A tidal wave of guilt washes over him when he realizes that Baekhyun must’ve been losing sleep over having to take care of him.

“Luhan?”

“He’s fine. I mean, he’s better than you, at least.” Baekhyun continues to avoid Chanyeol’s gaze until it finally settles on his lap where his arms are fidgeting. “Minseok… You… You never told me about him.”

And there it is. Byun Baekhyun is many things, but Chanyeol knows for a fact that being stupid is not one of those.

“There’s nothing to tell about him,” Chanyeol dismisses, but he knows deep down that it’s a lie, no matter how many times he has convinced himself otherwise.

“Are you sure? You sounded pretty angry at him a while ago.”

Chanyeol’s laugh comes out before he could ask permission from his lungs, and so it comes out distorted, like a pig’s squeal before it gets slaughtered. “Is eavesdropping your talent or something?”

Baekhyun finally looks at him, but when he does, it’s a glare. “You weren’t exactly quiet when you were telling him off just a few minutes ago.”

“Jesus, Baekhyun.”

“What?”

“You’re jealous of him,” Chanyeol states, because he knows there’s no point in asking about something that’s as clear as day. “I never thought I’d see you like this.”

“And you never will. Because I’m _not_ ,” Baekhyun shoots him down immediately, but the flush on his cheeks tells a different story. “Whatever. You’re insufferable.”

Baekhyun quickly stands up and leaves the room without saying another word, slamming the door on his way out for added effect, but all Chanyeol can think about is that perhaps he won’t lose Baekhyun after all.

 

—

 

Chanyeol had buried Minseok long ago, concealed along with other memories that he’d rather forget. So now, seeing Minseok again after all these years feels a lot like seeing someone who was resurrected from the dead.

It doesn’t help at all that Minseok’s the one tending to his wounds and seeing to it that he’s not doing anything stupid like straining himself that would lead to his stitches reopening. Being with Minseok almost all day for the past couple of weeks revisited old chapters that Chanyeol preferred to stay closed.

Chanyeol doesn’t exactly know how he feels about Minseok. He’s only sure of one thing and it’s that he’s angry at him for leaving when Chanyeol needed him most, but hurt often disguises itself as anger and Chanyeol wonders if that’s what Minseok sees when he looks at Chanyeol. Chanyeol wouldn’t be surprised, really. Minseok always seems to see right through people.

And then there’s Baekhyun to think about now.

Chanyeol hasn’t talked to him about their conversation the day he woke up, partly because he’s not physically strong enough to corner Baekhyun and confront him about it, but mostly because he’s afraid that he was just imagining everything he saw and heard from Baekhyun that day.

In a way, Chanyeol’s recovery is a blessing in disguise because he can use it as an excuse to mull over the can of worms that is his history with Minseok, and the anxiety that is what he could have with Baekhyun.

“This is all your fault, you know,” Chanyeol tells Sehun one time when they’re sitting out back, sipping beer to keep them warm from the creeping winter. “Imagine how much easier my life would be right now if you called anyone else but Min.”

Sehun simply scoffs at him. “If I hadn’t called Minseok, you and Luhan would be dead right now. Minseok’s the only doctor any of us can trust, and you know that. So stop whining like a baby and suck it up. The world didn’t stop spinning when the two of you broke up.”

But it _did_ stop for Chanyeol, or at least it felt like it did. Chanyeol doesn’t reply because he knows that as much as he trusts Sehun, he doesn’t trust him to understand how painful it was for him when Minseok left as if they hadn’t mapped out the rest of their lives together. Sehun wouldn’t know, because he has only loved Luhan all his life, and they’re still together.

It’s difficult to explain a pain to someone who hasn’t felt it yet.

Chanyeol excuses himself to pee. As he was about to enter the living room, he stops dead in his tracks when he hears Minseok and Baekhyun talking. He hides behind the wall dividing the living room and kitchen, and then strains his ears to listen in.

“…between you and him?”

Minseok lets out a soft chuckle. “We were both just dumb young adults who still believed in the stupid notion that love is all there is to life.”

“But… love _is_ mostly all there is to life. Isn’t it?”

“Not all the time. Not for everyone.”

There’s a pause. And then Baekhyun asks, “What do you mean?”

“When two people want two very different things, sometimes love isn’t enough compromise. Sometimes it’s not worth it to hold yourself back just because of love. So the moment my internship at Langley ended, I flew to the UK to become what I really wanted.”

“You just… left him?”

Minseok laughs, but anyone who hears it will immediately recognize that there isn't any malice in it. “It sounds bad when you put it that way,” he says. “But I did it for him as much as I did it for myself. He was willing to go AWOL and stay in the States for me. I couldn’t let him do that to himself, not with everything he sacrificed just to be selected to intern at Langley, so I knew what I needed to do. We weren’t good for each other.”

“But did you, you know, try to explain it to him?”

 _He did_ , Chanyeol wants to butt in, but that would ruin their entire conversation.

Minseok did explain it to him. Countless times. It was Chanyeol who didn’t want to understand, because anger and hate just ate him up. All he thought about at that time was how selfish Minseok was, to not include him in the future he wanted unlike how Chanyeol included him in his.

But now, hearing Minseok explain it to someone else feels different for Chanyeol. It’s like an abstract painting that has perplexed him for so long but now the colors and shapes are finally coming together and what once confused him suddenly made all the sense in the world.

“I’m leaving tonight, by the way,” Minseok says suddenly. “Chanyeol and Luhan are walking around just fine now, so I guess I’m not needed anymore.”

Baekhyun scoffs. “You’re leaving him again.”

“You know what, kid? Sometimes leaving is the best thing you could ever do to a person and to yourself. You need to leave in situations where you’re no longer needed. You need to leave when something or someone isn’t healthy for you anymore. The sooner you realize that, the easier your life will be,” says Minseok. When Baekhyun doesn’t reply, he adds, “Besides, you’re here now. I’m sure Chanyeol needs you more than he needs me.”

“Me? Why would Chanyeol need me?” Baekhyun asks disbelievingly.

“I’m not blind. I’ve seen the way you look at each other.”

“We’re not—”

Minseok’s laugh cuts Baekhyun’s explanation short. “There’s no point in denying it. Anyone with two eyes and who isn’t stupid can see what I’m seeing. Just… Make sure you’re ready to accept everything that comes with being with Chanyeol. His job, the danger of it… Take it from someone who’s been in the industry and has been with him. No relationship’s a walk in the park, but for people like me and him, it’s particularly difficult.”

Chanyeol leaves after that, scared of what Baekhyun else might say. He goes back to Sehun and steals his beer, drowning himself to forget for a while—forget about mistakes he made when he was with Minseok, forget the anxiety about what will happen with him and Baekhyun, forget about everything else that’s happening right now. He wants to forget even just for tonight, because remembering has always been tough on him.

 

—

 

Chanyeol and Luhan were in the middle of sparring when they hear Sehun yell their names from the living room.

They immediately rush to see what’s going on with Sehun, and when they get there they find Sehun staring at his laptop, horrified.

“Minister Choi was right, after all,” Sehun whispers, his hands trembling as he scrolls through his laptop. “Washington’s using us as a puppet to declare war on China.”

Luhan takes Sehun’s laptop from him and studies what Sehun’s so frightened about. The moment Luhan’s eyes land on the screen, his face contorts from confused to shocked to terrified all in the span of a few seconds. Chanyeol doesn’t take that as a good sign.

“THAAD missile launch codes,” says Luhan.

Chanyeol peers at the laptop screen from behind Luhan to see it for himself, and his heart drops to his feet.

There are far too many numbers on the monitor, but Chanyeol can recognize the first eight numbers anywhere. ERIS is one of three institutions authorized to have access to these codes, the other two being the NIS and the Defense Security Command of the armed forces.

The codes were among the first batch of intelligence ever shared to Chanyeol’s class of trainees after they were officially admitted to the agency. They were tasked to memorize the codes in order for them to identify them immediately in the unlikely situation that they fall into the wrong hands, which is exactly what is happening right now.

“There’s more,” Sehun announces. He takes back the laptop from Luhan’s hands and opens another window. Chanyeol recognizes it as the program Sehun designed to match phone calls. “A few nights ago, the assassin made a call to a burner phone that isn’t registered in any cellular network, but I managed to trace the burner’s connection to the WiFi at Noksapyeong Station.”

“Noksapyeong? That’s just a few minutes away from Hooker Hill,” Luhan points out.

Sehun lets out a defeated sigh. “I know. Listen to this,” he says, and then taps on the space key of his laptop. Voices begin resonating from the speakers.

 _“Two men came in here last week. Agents I’ve seen from The Blue House,”_ a man says. Chanyeol could never forget that voice, unmistakably the assassin’s. _“Sorry it took me so long to update you. I’m wounded and in hiding. I can’t go back there now that they know where I’m operating from.”_

Another voice replies, someone Chanyeol doesn’t recognize. _“It’s alright. If you’re injured, that means they’re licking their wounds as well. We have time.”_

_“They were poking around the shed when I found them. I don’t know what they’ve found, but we need to hurry with Plan B. We can’t fail again.”_

_“You mean you can’t fail again,”_ the stranger replies. _“Meet me at the location we talked about before on the 22nd at ten o’clock. I need to verify first if what you stole is what I’m looking for, and if that’s the case, then I’ll pay you the amount we agreed on. If not, I’m afraid I’ll have to silence you for good.”_

The line clicks before the assassin can say anything back.

“I heard this call before I finished decrypting the files from the assassin’s computer,” Sehun explains. “I didn’t know what he stole at first, but when I found those codes, I thought I was going to be sick.”

Luhan runs his hands through his hair, pulling at the strands in frustration. “We need to tell Junmyeon. Jongdae. Anyone. We can’t continue with this mission alone anymore. We need help. This is bigger than any of us. I don’t want to be responsible for something as huge as this.”

“What the fuck are you babbling on about? You’ve been responsible for important missions before! You were assigned to stop an ambassador’s assassination for fuck’s sake!” Sehun screams, which catches Chanyeol off-guard. Sehun has always had a temper, but Chanyeol has never seen him this angry, especially at Luhan.

“So you’re suggesting that we run after this asshole ourselves?” Luhan spits back. “These are _live_ codes, Sehun. We don’t know who the fuck they’re aiming these missiles at, but if we fail, people will die. Thousands of them, at least. We can’t stop this ourselves.”

Chanyeol finally breaks his silence. “Sehun… Can’t we do anything else? Can’t you delete the codes from here? You’ve already managed to break into his system.”

“I can, but…” Sehun trails off, then shakes his head gravely. “It will take a few days, at least. I haven’t broken through all of the file’s security profiles, just the ones necessary to trace it.”

Chanyeol falls silent again, weighing the odds in his mind. Luhan has a point; it’s a risky mission, to go after the live codes without any kind of backup from the agency—since they’re technically in hiding, all they have is the equipment they have inside the house.

But Sehun’s right as well. They’ve been sent to do risky assignments before. This case might be more difficult because of how big the stakes are, but apart from that, it’s not entirely different from being entrusted to guard an ambassador from assassination.

Besides, Luhan’s right. This _is_ bigger than any of them, but this mission became personal the moment the assassin blew up Chanyeol’s apartment and had Baekhyun involved. It only gives Chanyeol more reason to do it.

“We need to at least try,” Chanyeol decides. “This is our mission. It has been from the very beginning. We can’t pass it on to someone else who hasn’t been here from the start.”

Luhan sighs deeply and palms his face, and then finally nods. “Okay,” he says. “What do we do?”

“We need to destroy the codes that the assassin has,” says Chanyeol. He then turns to Sehun and asks, “What options do we have to do this? Since it’ll take too long if you do it digitally.”

Sehun begins typing furiously on his laptop, assessing the file to find the right chink in its armor. “Huh… that’s odd. He doesn’t have a copy of it in any of his systems.”

“Then we just have to get our hands on the copy he’ll be selling tomorrow night,” Luhan suggests.

Chanyeol’s gut is churning like crazy, as if his body’s telling him that something doesn’t add up. “Why wouldn’t he save a copy of it? Doesn’t that make our job _too_ easy?”

Luhan shrugs as he says, “Maybe he isn’t as smart as he thinks he is.”

Chanyeol’s instincts go even more ballistic. He’s thinking that if the assassin has made it this far alive, he must be doing something right and he’s not careless with his work. But Chanyeol tries his best to ignore it. He buries his doubts deeper and deeper at the back of his mind, because he has to believe that what they’re about to do is possible. He simply has to.

“We head out tomorrow night,” Chanyeol says. “Prepare everything tonight. We need to be ready the moment Sehun tracks the file when the seller opens it for the buyer to verify the codes.”

Luhan says nothing else and just nods grimly. He heads upstairs after that.

Chanyeol lets out the breath he’s been holding the entire conversation as he slumps into the couch, burying his face in both of his palms.

“Yeol… Do you think we can pull this off?” Sehun asks.

Chanyeol sits up straight and whispers, “I _have_ to. I don’t have any other choice.”

 

—

 

When Chanyeol was packing the things that he needed for the mission tomorrow night, Baekhyun slips into his room.

Baekhyun had moved out of Chanyeol’s room the night Minseok left, as Minseok has given Baekhyun permission to use his room in the house for as long as Baekhyun liked, mostly because Minseok’s espionage days are well behind him so he no longer has use for a space in a safehouse.

“Did you need something, Baek?”

Baekhyun sits at the foot of the bed sheepishly, averting his eyes from Chanyeol’s. “You’re going out again tomorrow night.”

Chanyeol freezes, his hand stopping in the middle of packing extra magazines for his handgun. “You really do have a knack for eavesdropping, don’t you?” he chuckles. “Ever considered a career change? Eavesdroppers make great agents.”

“I think I’ll stick to writing, thank you.”

Chanyeol shakes his head, smirking at Baekhyun’s response. “If you’re here to threaten me about not coming back, don’t worry. I am.” After he loads the last magazine in his bag, he walks toward Baekhyun and stops directly in front of him. He gently lifts Baekhyun’s chin with his fingertips. “Stop avoiding my eyes. You only do that when you’re anxious about something. Don’t be. I’m going to come back. I keep my promises, don’t I?”

“I’m just worried that something might happen to you,” Baekhyun whispers, his pupils shaking as they stare at Chanyeol.

A smile plays on Chanyeol’s lips. “Something always happens to me. But not enough to kill me. I’m not going to let that happen.” Baekhyun licks his lips, and Chanyeol’s eyes couldn’t help but notice it. Chanyeol’s heartbeat is drumming in his ears, his next words coming out shaky. “Is that the only reason why you’re here? To remind me to stay safe again?”

Baekhyun remains silent. All Chanyeol can hear right now is his own heart thrashing in his chest, his body burning hotter and hotter by every second. The heat melts all the fears he has about being this close to Baekhyun—close enough to touch, close enough to want, close enough to claim. His eyes trace every single detail of Baekhyun’s face, and all he can think about is how Baekhyun puts every other work of art to shame.

Baekhyun’s skin is soft under his touch, and Chanyeol craves to hold more. He craves to explore every curve and crevice that Baekhyun has, and it’s a craving he’s had for a while now. And now that it’s here, just a kiss away… How can Chanyeol say no?

Chanyeol leans down and connects his mouth to Baekhyun’s, and he’s certain that this is what heaven feels like.

Baekhyun’s shock turns soft, turns into pleasure, and in no time, he has his arms wrapped around the back of Chanyeol’s neck, pulling him even deeper, and Chanyeol gladly complies.

It’s like something has exploded inside Chanyeol’s chest, the culmination of years and years and years of pent up feelings and unsaid words and buried affection that he never had the courage to act upon until tonight.

Chanyeol grips either side of Baekhyun’s hips and then slides his hands down the back of Baekhyun’s thighs so that he could carry him onto the bed. Baekhyun’s arms tighten their hold onto him as he does so, the kisses getting more careless by each second.

Chanyeol lays him gently on the bed, breaking his lips away from Baekhyun’s for a moment. “You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to do that,” he says breathlessly.

“Oh, I do,” Baekhyun smirks, touching the tip of his nose to Chanyeol’s. “I always knew you had a big fat crush on me.”

Chanyeol begins to laugh, but is interrupted by Baekhyun kissing him again and again and again until the flock of butterflies in his stomach reappear and steals the air away from his lungs once more.

In a blur of teeth and tongue, their clothes become a forgotten heap on the floor. Chanyeol finally sees Baekhyun fully, and he’d be lying if he said that it wasn’t a thought that had ever crossed his mind.

Chanyeol’s mouth travels from Baekhyun’s lips to his neck, then to his shoulder, then to his chest, moving lower and lower until it’s at Baekhyun’s length. Chanyeol pries Baekhyun’s legs open then, leaving small kisses on Baekhyun’s tip while the pads of his fingers dig into Baekhyun’s skin, soft enough not to leave bruises but hard enough to make Baekhyun understand how much he wants this.

He feels Baekhyun shudder at every peck, but when Chanyeol finally coats him with his mouth, Baekhyun’s back curls upwards as he lets out a low, guttural moan that has Chanyeol’s throat constricting around him even more.

Baekhyun’s hands are gripping the sheets so harshly that Chanyeol’s certain the fabric’s bound to tear, but he doesn’t stop pumping his lips up and down Baekhyun’s length even when Baekhyun lets out a strangled scream that sounds like it’s been itching to come out of Baekhyun’s throat for quite some time now.

Chanyeol slips a finger in while Baekhyun’s guard is off, and Chanyeol’s rewarded with another one of Baekhyun’s airy whimpers which is beginning to sound like music to his ears.

The sensual noises coming out of Baekhyun’s mouth is enough to send blood rushing down to Chanyeol’s groin, and by the time Chanyeol climbs back up to kiss Baekhyun’s lips again, he’s rock-hard way before Baekhyun grips him with his slender fingers.

Baekhyun pumps Chanyeol a few more times and then lines Chanyeol up to his entrance, but Chanyeol grabs his wrist and stops him midway.

“Are you ready?” Chanyeol asks, his strained voice laced with worry.

Baekhyun just smiles. “I’ve been ready for quite some time now, actually,” he says before kissing Chanyeol again and then guides him into him.

Chanyeol fills Baekhyun slowly and surely, and by the time he’s almost well into Baekhyun, he shudders from the friction that Baekhyun’s walls are giving off. Baekhyun tenses around him even more, and Chanyeol’s sure that his legs have turned to mush.

“Fucking hell,” Chanyeol breathes out as he buries his face into the crook of Baekhyun’s neck.

Chanyeol wills himself to move despite the paralyzing pleasure Baekhyun’s giving him. Soon, he’s settled into a nice rhythm and Baekhyun’s moans follow suit, and the room is filled with nothing but the sound of their bodies clashing and their groans echoing each other’s.

Finally, Chanyeol explodes, the built-up pleasure shooting through him and Baekhyun doesn’t stay behind for too long. Chanyeol pulls out just as slowly as he entered, and then crashes beside Baekhyun, gasping for air.

“That was…”

“…nice,” Baekhyun finishes for him, smiling. He plants one last kiss on Chanyeol’s lips before standing up to clean himself.

As Chanyeol watches Baekhyun walk toward the bathroom, he notices something at the small of Baekhyun’s back.

“You never told me you had a tattoo,” says Chanyeol when Baekhyun returns to bed. He turns Baekhyun around to appreciate the skin inked with a simple drawing of a triangle facing upwards. “Why a triangle?”

“It means fire.”

“And I’m guessing you’re not going to tell me what fire means to you?”

Baekhyun laughs and faces him again to kiss him deeply. “Tattoos are personal. Most people don’t like sharing why they got theirs,” he says after he pulls away.

“Okay. I respect that,” Chanyeol concedes.

Baekhyun cuddles into his side and Chanyeol allows him, placing a tender kiss into Baekhyun’s forehead as he wraps his left arm around him.

_Fire._

There’s no word more perfect to describe how Chanyeol’s heart feels right now.

 

—

 

The second Sehun’s computer beeps indicating that the tracker has been turned on, Chanyeol and Luhan spring into action.

They’ve been driving around Yongsan-gu for a while now, so it wasn’t difficult for them to get to where the signal from the trace was coming from. The tracker leads them to a dark alley concealed behind the bustling streets. They get into position—Luhan finds a good vantage point to set up his sniper while Chanyeol remains on the ground to fire if anything goes wrong and chase the assassin if needed.

The plan’s simple enough: take down the buyer first, then fire at the computer to make sure that the codes stay out of danger, just as they should’ve been in the first place. Chanyeol’s target is the assassin himself—he asked for him personally, because he wants to be the one who kills the man who tried to harm Baekhyun.

“Lux in position,” Chanyeol whispers.

“I have visual on the buyer and the package,” Luhan replies.

“Good,” Sehun says through the earpiece. He’s somewhere around the area as well, parked in a car where he has set up base, keeping his eyes and ears on the situation. “Hold on for a while. Let him finish verifying, or else we’ll fire way too early and scare the assassin. We need to catch them off-guard.”

“Roger,” Chanyeol and Luhan say simultaneously.

And so they wait. Every minute passes by painfully slow; Chanyeol has never been this eager to get a mission over and done with. A nagging voice in his subconscious dispelled the tunnel vision he had began to form in his mind, reminding him of Baekhyun’s words.

_Come back to me._

Chanyeol clutches his gun tighter, the desire to end all of this burning ever so strongly in his chest.

And then Sehun finally gives the signal.

Luhan’s first shot is fired, nothing short of precise. The bullet pierces through the buyer’s skull, and by the time his body plummets on the ground that’s now stained with blood, Luhan has already destroyed the laptop with three quick bullets each on the screen and on the keyboard. The file’s as good as the buyer now—dead and useless.

But the assassin is quick on his feet. He was only fazed by a split-second, turning immediately to where Luhan’s bullet came from and pulls out his pistol, firing shots that Chanyeol has lost count of.

When Chanyeol hears a short scream followed by the sound of a body hitting the floor, he emerges from his hiding spot and sprints toward the assassin, shooting indiscriminately.

Chanyeol finally hits flesh, and the assassin drops to the ground, gripping his left leg. Chanyeol runs even faster with his gun still raised for good measure, but he stops at his tracks when Sehun screams into his earpiece.

“MAN DOWN!”

 _Luhan_.

Chanyeol stands completely still for a few agonizing seconds, debating whether he should pursue the assassin or rush to his partner. The protocol has been made clear to them ever since they first set foot at the agency: the mission doesn’t stop even if there’s a man down.

But Chanyeol’s legs refuse to work as he stands there staring at the assassin who’s starting to get up again. Tears begin pouring out of his eyes. He doesn’t want to let the man go, but he doesn’t want to let Luhan die either. So he has to make a choice, and he has to choose right now.

Chanyeol stares for a few more moments at the assassin as he limps away before turning around to run at the speed of lighting to make sure that Luhan’s still alive.

 

—

 

When they get back at the safehouse, Luhan has lost a lot of blood while Chanyeol and Sehun are drenched in it. Two bullets hit Luhan, one in his stomach and the other on his shoulder. Minseok is already waiting for them at the gate, helping Chanyeol and Sehun carry Luhan into the house as quickly as possible before everything’s too late.

Chanyeol didn’t even notice that he was uncontrollably shaking until Minseok stopped him from helping in the operation.

“Stop,” Minseok says sternly, gripping Chanyeol’s shoulders so firmly that it would’ve hurt him if he wasn’t feeling anything but fear. “Chanyeol, stop. Stay here. You can’t help. You’re in shock. If I let you in there, you’ll hurt Luhan even more.”

But Chanyeol doesn’t care, he wants to do anything that he can to save one of his closest friends in the entire world. It’s his fault that Luhan had been hurt. If he only listened to Luhan—if he only didn’t rush into the mission despite Luhan’s constant reminder that they couldn’t do this alone, he wouldn’t be bleeding to death in the kitchen counter right now.

“Chanyeol, stop!” Baekhyun yells, pulling Chanyeol back by his waist. “Listen to Minseok and calm down!”

“I don’t have time for this,” Minseok says and lets go of Chanyeol, rushing into the kitchen to begin the operation.

Chanyeol thrashes violently against Baekhyun’s chest, but remarkably, Baekhyun holds his ground, which is something given that Chanyeol is much bigger than he is.

“Let me go, Baekhyun!” Chanyeol shouts as he claws at Baekhyun’s arms wrapped around his waist. “Let me go! I need to be there, I need to—” he trails off, and eventually stops struggling. Baekhyun lets him go and he falls to his knees, bawling as his tears litter the living room floor. “It’s my fault, and I need to help him.”

Baekhyun rushes in front of him. “You’re not helping anyone while you’re like this. Minseok’s right. Sit this one out and just trust in them to save Luhan. Just calm down.”

But how can Chanyeol calm down when his clothes smell like Luhan’s blood, choking him with unbearable guilt because this _was_ his doing. He hurt Luhan just as much as the assassin did when he fired those shots, shots that could’ve been avoided if Chanyeol just listened to what Luhan was saying the night before, if Chanyeol just let his pride take the backseat this time around.

And if Luhan dies… that blood is on Chanyeol’s hands.

As Chanyeol struggles to breathe through all the snot that his crying brought, he realizes that his hand is still warm with blood. His tears stop when he notices that the spot on the living room floor where he’s sitting is beginning to pool with more of it and it’s coming from—

Chanyeol stands up quickly and whips out his gun, his entire body trembling as he aims it at Baekhyun.

Baekhyun raises his hands. “Chanyeol, w—what are you—”

“Why is your leg bleeding, Baek?” Chanyeol asks. “WHY?” he shouts, because he knows where he shot the assassin before he let him get away, and that’s exactly where the blood from Baekhyun’s leg is coming from.

Baekhyun drops the act, his expression shifting from scared to contemptuous in just a split-second. “I did it. I did all of it,” he admits, and Chanyeol can’t believe his ears.

A new wave of tears rush out of Chanyeol’s eyes, but he doesn’t let himself buckle under pain again. Not tonight. Not this time.

“Do it,” Baekhyun urges him, his voice full of venom. “If you still have any bravery in you left, _do it_.”

Chanyeol doesn’t look away when he pulls the trigger.


	3. The Truth

The national news is blasting on the television inside the agent lounge when Chanyeol enters. He spots a familiar face among the sea of agents catching a break, and he breaks into a smile as he walks toward the empty seat beside his old friend.

“I’ve never seen you smile this much before,” Jongdae says as Chanyeol takes a seat. “Are you happy about your successful mission making headlines or are you happy about being promoted?”

Chanyeol laughs, waving off Jongdae’s question. “The promotion’s just a rumor that the department secretaries started because they’re bored.”

“We work in intelligence, Chanyeol. Rumors don’t have a place here,” Jongdae rolls his eyes. His attention shifts to the television, and Chanyeol turns around to watch.

> _Park Eunhhye, president and chief financial officer of PMY Corporation, the fourth-largest chaebol in the country, was arrested at the company’s headquarters in Yeouido-dong, Yeongdeungpo-gu earlier this morning for allegedly influencing President Ong Myunghee’s decisions over state affairs, abusing her connections to the first family, and using classified government documents._
> 
> _Park is also accused of influencing KAIST to bend admission criteria in order for her daughter, Park Jihyo, to be admitted to the university._
> 
> _The National Intelligence Service has disclosed proof of these allegations to the public through a series of e-mails and text messages between Park and all of those who are involved, including the President. Following these leaks, the National Assembly is now in the process of creating an impeachment bill against the President that is expected to be approved without much difficulty, given the mountain of evidence against the President._

“Your sister’s a good news anchor,” Jongdae remarks.

Chanyeol couldn’t help but smile, because he knows how hard Yoora worked to be where she is now. He hasn’t been to Gyeonggi-do for a while now. Perhaps he could pay Yoora a visit soon.

A tritone announcement alert resonates from the intercom, and everyone in the lounge freezes as the sound alert is only used when someone’s called into the spymaster’s office. People only get called into Ignis’ office for two reasons: doing something remarkably well or doing something incredibly stupid.

“Park Chanyeol, you are invited to the spymaster’s office,” the announcer says, and Chanyeol’s heart drops to his feet.

 _What did I do this time?_ he asks himself.

Another tritone rings after the announcement and everyone inside the lounge gets back to their respective businesses.

Jongdae chuckles in his seat as he spreads a newspaper over the table. “I told you, Park. Rumors don’t have a place here. Go and get that promotion.”

 

**_Three months ago_ **

“Do it,” Baekhyun urges him, his voice full of venom. “If you still have any bravery in you left, _do it_.”

Chanyeol doesn’t look away when he pulls the trigger.

But Baekhyun’s still standing even after the echo of the gunshot dies.

“What… How…”

Baekhyun rips open his shirt and reveals the bulletproof vest underneath it. He removes a pin clipped on one of the vest’s pockets and tosses it at Chanyeol. He catches the pin mid-air, and when he opens his palm to see what it is, he feels as if all the bones in his body have melted.

In his palm sits the same pin he found in the woods that night of the attempted assassination of Ambassador Zhang, the one that the assassin had left for him to find—a metal triangle with the color of fire. And then he remembers Baekhyun’s hidden tattoo, the triangle inked on the small of his back. Baekhyun had said that it meant fire…

A triangle symbolizes fire, and in Latin, fire translates to…

“Ignis,” Chanyeol realizes. “You’re… Ignis.”

A sliver of a smile cracks through Baekhyun’s lips. “I am,” he admits. “I’m the infamous spymaster of ERIS. A lot of people don’t believe I exist, because I never let them see me. But the thing is, I prefer to work in the dark. I take my missions _very seriously_ , Agent Lux, and you’re the longest mission I’ve ever been on.”

Chanyeol’s words fail him, his mouth struggling to get anything out.

Baekhyun… his sweet, sweet roommate… How is this possible? If Baekhyun isn’t who Chanyeol thought he was, then does that mean that the past four years of their friendship are nothing but lies manufactured for… what exactly? What’s the reason for Ignis to go deep-cover as Chanyeol’s roommate? And then Chanyeol remembers who’s dying on the kitchen counter right now.

“Luhan… He’s…”

“He’s fine. You have my word,” Baekhyun—Ignis assures him. “He’s one of the three agents that know that I’ve been keeping an eye on you, so he agreed to be part of my plan.”

Suddenly, Chanyeol’s chest feels too tight. “Plan… What plan?”

“Agent Lux, calm down and let me explain.”

Ever since Chanyeol was a recruit, the spymaster has been intrigued by the way his trainers talked about him. Chanyeol didn’t particularly excel at anything, like Luhan is at fighting or like Sehun is with computers. Chanyeol was more of a jack of all trades, master of none, and what was notably unique about him is that in every mission simulation, he was always the one that figured out who’s behind every plot.

His intuition was what made him stand out in his class of recruits, and even if he didn’t complete training with special merits, the spymaster had already made his mind into taking this orphan-turned-prodigy under his wing, but he had to make sure that Chanyeol was really deserving of it.

“And so I created this complex mission to see if you would be fit to replace me someday,” Baekhyun explains. “The goal was never to stop the codes from being bought or to kill the assassin. The goal was to find out who I was. And you succeeded. Congratulations, agent.”

Chanyeol’s mind is reeling from everything that he just heard. “The assassin… Sehun tracked him… find out who he was. Kim Jongin. Who is that?”

“I just used his voice, but everything else was me,” Baekhyun smirks. “I was the one you fought at Polly’s that night. I was the one who planted information so that this mission would be as believable as possible. As you can see from the mess I’m making on your living room floor, I’m definitely the one you fought earlier tonight.”

“Why me?”

Baekhyun answers without missing a beat. “Not everyone is gifted with the gift of intuition, let’s be honest about that. Being able to work in our field using smarts is one thing, but being intuitive… That’s a different story. You remind me of myself when I was younger.”

 _Younger?_ “How old are you really?” Chanyeol asks. His brain feels like it’s going to explode at any moment now. “ _Who_ are you really?”

“I’m ten years older than you, agent. As for who I am… You just found out, didn’t you? I’m Ignis, I’m the spymaster of ERIS, and what I’m asking you right now is that do you want to be my successor?”

 

**_Five months later_ **

Chanyeol could get used to waking up to the view of the Mediterranean for the rest of his life.

As he looks out into the brilliant blue sea, he thinks that there’s nothing more perfect than this moment right here, this moment of peace that he’s been craving after all the insanity that happened in the past year.

Familiar arms snake around his waist and Chanyeol stands corrected—being with Baekhyun outweighs all the moments that he thought were already perfect.

“I made breakfast,” says Baekhyun, kissing Chanyeol’s shoulder.

Chanyeol laughs as he turns around to face Baekhyun. “You always do.”

Baekhyun lips curve upward into a smile, and he stands on the tip of his toes to kiss Chanyeol properly on the lips. He steals one last peck before pulling Chanyeol into the dining room where a full spread of a traditional Greek breakfast sits on the marble table.

Yes. Chanyeol can definitely get used to this for the rest of his life.

And Chanyeol has that now. He turned down Baekhyun’s offer of being the next spymaster, and instead asked him to move where he always dreamt of living in ever since he was a kid.

At first, Chanyeol was afraid that Baekhyun would turn him down as well, that his act as Chanyeol’s roommate for four years was no more than just that, an act, but Baekhyun admitted that he was every bit of in love with Chanyeol as much as Chanyeol was with him, even though it was never really part of Baekhyun’s original plan.

“It’s impossible not to fall in love with you, Park Chanyeol,” Baekhyun had said when Chanyeol asked him if his feelings were also a lie along with everything else. “Falling in love with you was the one thing I couldn’t predict happening.”

But for good measure, Chanyeol still asks him about it once in a while. It’s turned into some sort of an inside joke between them, but whenever they talk about it, it feels like a distant dream that they aren’t sure even truly happened.

The mission, the assassin, Ignis… those were all lies. But Baekhyun was real—he still is, and he always will be. Baekhyun will always be the one thing in Chanyeol’s life that has been real from start to finish, and if what Baekhyun said was true about Chanyeol being intuitive, then Chanyeol’s instincts would’ve told him that Baekhyun was nothing but a daydream.

But every kiss, every touch, every smile was nothing short of genuine, and that’s saying something, given that Chanyeol has lived almost a quarter of his life hidden in the darkness of secrets.

And as Chanyeol stares at Baekhyun from across the breakfast table, he’s certain that he’s made the right choice of leaving his old life behind—his life of danger, of lies, of secrets.

Though sometimes, he can’t help but think…

“Baekhyun really is your name, right?” Chanyeol asks.

Baekhyun throws his answer at Chanyeol—quite literally, in the form of an olive bread.


	4. GLOSSARY

  1. NIS - The initialism for the National Intelligence Service, the chief intelligence agency of South Korea.
  2. Cover - A persona, profession, purpose, activity, or fictitious image maintained by an undercover operative.
  3. Babysitters - Espionage slang for bodyguards.
  4. MOFA - The acronym for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who is in charge of South Korea’s foreign relations.
  5. Radio silence - A status in which all fixed or mobile radio stations in an area are asked to stop transmitting for safety or security reasons.
  6. Seouldae - The colloquial term for Seoul National University (romanized as _Seoul Daehakgyo_ ), which is considered to be the most prestigious university in South Korea.
  7. Case officer - An intelligence officer who’s a trained specialist in the management of agents & agent networks, spots potential agents, recruits prospective agents, & trains agents in tradecraft; also called an agent handler or simply a handler.
  8. FSB - The initialism for the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation, the principal security agency of Russia & the main successor agency to the USSR’s Committee of State Security (KGB).
  9. Spymaster - The head of an organization of spies.
  10. The Blue House - The executive office and official residence of the President of the Republic of Korea.
  11. MSS - The initialism for the Ministry of State Security, the intelligence & security agency of the People’s Republic of China.
  12. THAAD - The acronym for Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, an American anti-ballistic missile defense system in response to to the continuous nuclear & missile threats by North Korea.
  13. Langley - An unincorporated community in the census-designated place of McLean in Fairfax County, Virginia, United States and is often used as a metonym for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), as it is home to its headquarters.
  14. Naked - A spy operating without cover or backup.
  15. Safehouse - A house in a seemingly inconspicuous location, used by spies (or criminals) in hiding.
  16. Yukgaejang - A Korean dish made from shredded beef with scallions and other ingredients, which are simmered together for a long time.
  17. Nightcrawler - A spotter who prowls bars and nightclubs looking for government employees, military personnel, etc. who can be compromised using booze, drugs, or sex.
  18. Mama-san - A woman in a position of authority, especially one in charge of a geisha house or bar in Japan and East Asia.



**Author's Note:**

> Playlist (listen to it [here](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0GWVhMlNNQ75Ov4x9NDwvP?si=s_flIk1ITSKFbiQ1TSIQJg)):  
> 1\. THEY. - Dante's Creek  
> 2\. Elijah Blake - To Be Loved  
> 3\. Kyle Dion - Not All the Way  
> 4\. offonoff - Cigarette (feat. Tablo, MISO)  
> 5\. juan karlos - Buwan  
> 6\. Alina Baraz - Tainted  
> 7\. Frank Ocean - Thinkin Bout You  
> 8\. JMSN - Patiently  
> 9\. Daniel Caesar - Blessed  
> 10\. Alina Baraz - The One (feat. Jada)  
>   
> Thank you for reading until the end! Say hello: [Curious Cat](https://curiouscat.me/nineteenninetytwo) / [Tumblr](http://pcychedelic.tumblr.com/) / [Twitter](http://twitter.com/pcychedeiic/)


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